[snip]

With the course set the group soon emerged from their travel into a much lower though much smaller height area. The ceiling here was barely above 6ft above their heads, though it was quite wide nearly 80 yards by 40 yards almost from floor to ceiling were engrained deposits of dilthium and lithium ore! The quality was rough but acceptable, not quite Starfleet grade quality that they would want on their ships but for lower warp cores like those in use by Earth’s merchant fleets these would be more then sufficient. The ore was pretty deep down though it would require quite a bit of work to get a mining operation setup this deep and processors back up on the surface. They would also need to prospect for more deposits to make sure this wasnt just some tiny one off fluke.

Of course they should also probably get back to the surface with samples not to mention check in with the other team given they had found it seems local natives elsewhere on the planet.

GM CockRoach

Heather had to fight to hold back an exclamation of relief, fearing it would echo through the entire system, as the scanners started reporting the deposits of both dilthium and lithium ore. She pulled a sample container out of her bag and made her way over to one of the veins of dilthium and started collecting a sample for analysis back on the ship.

“Ensign, map the interior of this cavern. Lieutenant Kurata, anything on scanners? And was there any more information from Bravo Team or the Captain, Captain Baumann?”

Cmdr Grace - XO/CSO

“Yes, ma’am,” El said. Their lights didn’t take in the immenseness of the chamber, though it did illuminate the ceiling just a few feet above them. It felt different here. Were it not for the gravity - and a slightly greater one at that - she could almost feel she was floating, lost in the darkness of space, devoid of all boundaries. The walls of the tunnels gave a solidity to the senses and the feeling of the tons of stone over them. Here, as her light trailed off into the dark that solidity disappeared. Using her scanner she turned a slow 360 to get a sense of the ground topography of the cave before turning to the specifics of the minerals present. El began with the surface of the cave walls, ceiling and floor and then scanned to depth to get a sense of the veins and mineralization beyond the surface. To do this she moved away from the group toward one of the walls before making her way slowly around the cave. As the scanner did its thing, El moved her light over the walls and veins that ran along the surface like a geological web.

Baumann said “As was suggested, they are returning to the surface to rendezvous with us. And while you are plotting maps and collecting samples, Commander, you may want to contemplate why this place is shaped in this fashion.” and he quite directly glared at her. “Its been mined, ma’am. The indigenous life forms with primitive tools are active in the area. Again… we should go. Now.“

OOC: to clarify the natives are not currently actively tunneling, but yes they are using some sort of ‘advanced’ stone age tools to ‘mine’....

Kenzo grabber his scanner, opening it up and making scans on both near and far bands, trying to get a scan of the area to account for interference by the minerals. “Scanning now, Commander.”

Scans soon came back, the dilthium and lithium crystals present were of mostly low quality even by Earth Starfleet standards. They would be fine for Earth merchant ships only really as stated before. The scanning radius was however, limited more then it should be for some unknown reason. Instead of several hundred yards of scanning at high resolution. They were reduced to a bare 30 or so yards. Within this radius they also picked up some of the bio-luminescent moss and fungus, as well as a variety of deep subterranean mushrooms. As well as indications of differing forms of tiny tunnels dug by deep-earth dwelling creatures like higher up.

Mined? She heard that from the big MACO. El shifted the light to look at the walls and floor of the cave more closely. Was there evidence of picks and shovels or drilling or detonations? Debris on the floor? Discarded tools? Evidence of the means of removing what was taken? Looking back, the soldiers were wraith like at a distance - a profile here or a flash of a face there as their lights moved and played about.

• El, Eng

GM CockRoach