Posted by Lieutenant Naomi Locke (Science Officer) in Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Isaac Black (Chief Armory Officer) in Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
[snip]

Turning to El, Kalpana pointed to the orbiter. “..We had begun to descend from Earth orbit to risk reentry. We knew there had been damage to the orbiter from ice and foam during launch, but ground control felt we could risk reentry. We were half way through reentry and we felt a larger then usual shutter pass through the rear of the orbiter. A split second later some alarms began to sound, but just after that....” Kalpana gave a slight shrug as if struggling to explain the old memories. “..I’ll be honest it felt like everything moved in slow motion for what felt like an hour, but just had to be a second or so. Then a flash of light overwhelmed us and when it cleared we were still entering through the atmosphere. But instead of being out over the Pacific racing in land across the United States as our flight plan directed we found ourselves here. Though we did not realize it at the time..”

What could that have been? El wondered. It almost sounded like it was a leap to warp or, if one believed science fiction, a wormhole or something, but with the lights? And how would that have been caused? Or somehow caught in a kind of .. rescue from another ship that grappled it or, like the Vulcans, had a tractor beam and they somehow towed it through warp to here? No, that would have been longer than an hour or seconds.

Rick took over, “..We had lost contact with ground control, and any other navigational aides. So we went manual, none of the ground mass made sense but we eventually were able to make a more or less controlled landing on this massive plateau that you see now. For the first hours we figured it was just some area of like Arizona or Texas. But the arrival of Spikers and such soon convinced us otherwise..” he said again pointing to a 20 or so of the massive flying insects overhead. “..We soon realized we weren’t in Kansas anymore to borrow an old phrase. Eventually we rigged up that water wheel you see, jury rigged the radio to send out a broadcast every hour or so, and settled in to wait. As days became weeks became months and years, we eventually gave up on ever being rescued and settled in to just live out our lives here.” he said.

“That was some flying to come down in that onto no runway. Didn’t they call the shuttles a ‘flying brick’?” Great, now she sounded like some kind of museum tour guide interpreter. Then she caught herself. No! Their shuttle crew were dead. The mission failed. Remember that, El! No matter how real these people were this was impossible!

Naomi was curious as she listened to the group’s conversation. She frowned at the data frowned and immediately considered the reasons for this. There wasn’t many even with the ever growing lifespan of humans over the eons. This sparked her curiosity enough to speak up.

“How of you are there?” The question was expected from an someone with a thirst for knowledge.

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

”..Just the seven of us. We have explored much of the local region here. But no other signs of intelligent life ever came up on this planet..” Kalpana said.

The obvious answer would be seven, shy of children. Two women. Five guys at last from the bit that she had caught. A hundred fifty years. How did ‘that’ work? No quarrels. The implication in what this ‘Rick’ said was that the others were back there. The seven. No children? Why was it these two who came? After a century and a half there would be the potential of many children. But if they didn’t age, what of them? Were there any? More impossible things. El glanced up at the surrounding buzzing insects and thought of the animals, these ‘spikers’. Were they similarly affected in some way? Would they be? Pros. Cons.

As if also sensing the unasked or implied question, Kalpana went on, “..Before you ask no there are no children from us. We um....well tried but whatever thing allows us to remain as old as we were when we got here, also meant we couldn’t have children..” she said

Or whatever they went through to get here rendered them incapable, El thought, but that was more of a doctor or science thing.

El was excited about being on this now second new world, breathing new air, seeing new .. critters. She glanced back to the shuttle. She and Aelef had been brought down to work, what, engineering things? That won’t fly again. Even if they manage to work in her machine shop for parts. There was no runway. They would need to put the shuttle on the Bonnie and launch her from that. But she was too far gone in age and damages. She glanced back to the two. And a century and a half away from any flight training. What use would ‘they’ be here, her and Aelef, at this point? Still, being here was exciting - but for the impossibility of it all. How was this possible?

• El, Eng

Ari listened to the couple and shook her head. “We sincerely appreciate the offer of refreshment, but it’s probably better if we didn’t. At least until we figure out a few things.” She laughed lightly to keep the conversation easy.

Rick seeming happy for the change of topic nodded, “..As you wish..” he said.

Just then, something dawned on her. “I know this seems like a silly question, but humor me, please.” She paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Just how long have you guys been here? I apologize for all the questions, but I hope you understand our curiosity.” She smiled again hoping she didn’t sound pushy.

She had asked because when one of them had asked how many of their group there were, it occurred to her that in over a century, there should have been a flock of folks. Perhaps there were and they just hadn’t seen them, yet. But if there wasn’t… Then time was the next curiosity factor. If they felt it had only been a few years or a decade, even, then they had a bigger problem. And a bigger one, beyond that, was … If their longevity was tied to the planet… what would happen if they left its surface?

Ari CO

”..Roughly speaking? About 148 or so years? We figured out that this planet has about the same length of 24 hour period of day/night that Earth does. Its trip around the system here is slightly longer though about 370 days locally..” he said.

Kalpana then decided to ask probably the question most burning on her mind, “..Um…so how is Earth?” she inquired.

GM CockRoach

To have a near Earth like that. That again seemed impossible. Well, sure, she hadn’t been to many worlds at all, well, okay two, but to have a near Earth thing like this? What were the odds? A Vulcan would figure that one, she thought.

Just as this question got asked, there was a slowly growing rubble in the air above them followed by a distant sonic boom crack. The swarm of 20 some spikers overhead flew off as through the cloud cover the Bonaventure made a obviously controlled descent from orbit to hold in a moving circular pattern about 40,000ft up. Why this had been done by the XO was anyone’s guess, since well he had not the foresight to tell the CO and company why he was doing it or warn them. The swarm of 20 spikers after recovering some distance away it seems just got ticked about this new much larger ‘intruder’ into their air space, and so began to swarm around the ship and land in places on the hull using their spikey tails to ‘attack’ the ship. Of course they couldn’t really do any damage to the ship right?

Kalpanna and Rick seemed stunned by this sudden appearance. “..Holy mother of God!” Rick said, “..is that your space ship?!?” Rick and Kalpanna then said in awe.

GM CockRoach

“Well that was dramatic,” El said dryly in the direction of Aelef, but others could likely hear. She looked up and felt a bit of pride in it, in what she saw. The bugs disappeared then seemed to not like the ship and moved up to .. say hi? What more could they do? “That,” she said, “is the Bonaventure. Our ship. Launched from spacedock from Earth.” She glanced to Aelef who was looking at her and shrugged a ‘what are they doing’? She shrugged back and looked back up, shielding her eyes with a hand as she gazed at it from the underside. That’s miles up still. Did they lose contact with them and had to come down?

Naomi digested her thoughts over the answer. Whatever phenomenon had occurred, it affected more than their age. Her lips curled into a thoughtful frown as she considered the possible causes. The sounds of the ship lowing in low caught her attention. Her eyes jerked skyward in time to see the Spike swarm ascendant to meet it.

“Yes, it is. And now it has gotten some unwanted attention.” Thinking fast through her anxiety, Naomi turned to the others.

“I’m not sure what the XO is thinking, but I don’t think having a swarm of bugs on the ship is good. Does anyone have any idea how much beating the hull can take before it ruptures?” She suspected they had little time before the ship crashed down into the planet.

“Or how we can get them off without putting ourselves at risk?”

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

Rick spoke, “..Early on Spikers tried attacking us and we sheltered in Columbia. Except for the glass after repeated hits they could not pierce the hull..” He said.

Knowing this El could know that likely the hull plating was then impenetrable to the Spikers no matter how much they went at it. The port holes on the Bonaventure made of far stronger composite clear glass then Columbia had was probably also impenetrable or else would require significantly more effort on the part of the Spikers to break. Even then if the Bonnie just polarized the hull plating then that alone would keep the Spikers from breaking through. Conversely a reverse electrical charge pulse through the ship’s plating would also serve likely to either scare off or if set high enough fry the large insects. So in short the Bonnie was quite safe, they could literally just raise the polarization system and would be invulnerable and do nothing else.

El looked over to Aelef. “Get in touch with the ship. What are they doing? And let them know they’ve attracted some local bugs.” He nodded and moved closer to the grounded shuttle, hearing what the survivors said. “I can’t see damage being done,” El said, turning into engineer mode. “Lots they could do up there. Polarize the hull, send an electrical pulse through it, even going back up into space would shake them off.” She didn’t say that polarizing would likely zap them like mosquitoes. Who was up there on the bridge? Probably Lt Green. He would go by the book, if they noticed them at all.

Isaac was looking around not a lot damage to the inside of the vessel. He was hoping to find the black box. According to the blueprints he found it should be in the area he was looking.

Lt. Isaac Black (AC)

Meanwhile inside the orbiter, Isaac would locate both the operations module recorder and OEX MADS recorder near both the lower cockpit and rear lab module respectively. Both seemed intact though no power was given to them anymore by the orbiters systems. Since all that rewiring had been focused and used to build the water generator outside as well as keep the radio and such powered and functioned over the last nearly 150 years. In short the two boxes would need an interface to be accessed by their scanners or the like and a power source.

Thankfully if Black got a little help they could easily do so in the shuttle pod that brought them here. It would take a bit of work but was more then doable unless any problems were happening inside either box from age and the like.

GM CockRoach

Aelef, meanwhile, moved to the shadow of the shuttle and took out his communicator. [o] Engineer Aelef to Bonaventure. We see you up there. That was . . quite an entrance. We’re wondering if anything is wrong? Are your comms not going through to us? [c] He didn’t add that the Captain would want to know, but that was better hinted than said in error. [o] You also have some bugs heading your way but Ensign Serinde doesn’t think they can do any harm. We’ve met two of the .. shuttle crew. They confirm they’ve been there for a century and a half but say they don’t know how. [c]

El & Aelef, Eng

Black packed up both boxes and put them in his backpack he pulled out his communicator =^= El are you at the shuttle I’m gonna need your help =^= he said as he started his way to the shuttle.

Lt. Isaac Black (AC)

“Okay.” Naomi stated, her fear lingered for a moment.

She started to feel like she overreacted and the awareness washed over her. Her anxiety spiked before she pushed it down. No point in worrying on something she couldn’t control. Her eyes spotted Engineering pull the flight recorder out of the ship. While they were busy with that, she might as well take samples of the ship’s hull.

Approaching the hull, she scrapped off material from the surface. She inserted the slid into her device. Bring up the files from 2003, she compared the components to the present day sample.

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

OCC: I am not engineering I am the AC. I am just getting the black box to see what really happened to see if we can back up there story or not