[snip]

El shifted over closer to where the Commander was at to unconsciously join her ‘team’. She swept her eyes over the territory in the direction of where the coring was going on but it was still out of sight. Were it a couple hundred meters like they said it should be visible. Perhaps it was farther out than that and Cullins was distance challenged. Well they would just have to hike there and do some pulling while the soldiers walked the perimeter. Were it coming up to dusk, El wondered whether the big cats would be out prowling too. Well, they should be there and back before that would happen. In a consideration of what they would be doing, El momentarily slipped away to find three pairs of gloves from the kit boxes; it would not do to be pulling cable with bare hands at least not that far.
- El, Eng

One of the NE’s mumbled something in Heather’s ear.

“What?”

He mumbled something again a little bit louder. Heather just turned to look at him for a second before she used her open hand to slap the computer station pretty hard. With a blink it adjusted it’s readings.

“Never mind. The probe seems to be a couple hundred meters,” she studied the screen again, “that way. Captain Baumann, Lt Kurata, Ensign Serinde , with me. Captain, have the MACO’s do a perimeter sweep and then help get the shuttle pod loaded. I want this area clear and the pod ready to depart when we get back, understood?”

Looking around Heather popped open her scanner as she picked up her bag again. “Let’s go.”

Putting actions to words, she headed towards the probe.

Cmdr. Grace - XO/CSO

El waited through the reiteration of the orders and wondered whether the planet was affecting more than just a coring drill. Was it affecting their scanners now? As they walked El’s mind silently calculated the additional weight potential of the coring and cable with the additional gravity of this world. While it was not a great increase it was enough to affect weight and in that regard amplify their own efforts. it was one thing to walk and move about - something that was felt after a day of climbing about in caves and hills and another thing to be lifting weights. Still, if Cullins was as blase about needing to lift things as he was then it couldn’t be ‘that’ hard to do or else he would have tried suggesting to reverse the roles and bring a MACO or two along for this. Certainly they had Lt Kurata along, and she was an engineer and could mock something up to automate it or at least affect a pulley to ease the lift. All that said it should be workable, she mused.

Their boots rustled in the short grass. She noticed that the blades were a little broader, perhaps a reaction to the higher gravity. Dust that they kicked up seemed to hang more sluggishly in the air. Even with the coming of the end of the day El could feel the cooler air coming up with the breeze. That would help them in their efforts. Casually she opened a package of some kind of nuts from the ration pack and chewed on them as they walked. It wasn’t far so she didn’t pull out anything that would take time to eat. “Lt,” she said to Kenzo. “Your name suggests Japanese. Did you grow up there?”

El, Eng

Once the group was underway to where the probe drill was setup, the forest about them seemed still and quiet. The air seemed cooler too likely though only due to the lack of more direct sunlight reaching the more shadowed areas here. Pushing through some bushes the group came to the improvised clearing the NEs earlier had setup where the core drill probe station was at. The main fusion cell box and rigging was all in place and undisturbed, but the soft blinking red light showed a beep series of error codes. El could see the two codes flashing would mean ‘probe cell power failure’ and ‘probe communication error’. The rigging for pulling the probe back up also showed a similar error that the riggings power cell was dead, which should nearly be impossible in such a short time! The cells were meant to last almost two days or so. This meant either something cause d the probe and/or the rigging’s cells to burn through their power faster then expected or something else caused it to drain. In the case of the first this could be explained by encountering say tougher materials to bore through but least by scans that didn’t seem to be the case, as for the second option well who knew? Either way they would have to lug up the 300 some ft cable/probe by hand.

GM CockRoach