Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Bridge
[snip]

A few minutes later three NE service techs came onto the bridge with haz mat suits on. Seeing the mess they groaned a bit, “..Urgh that is a horrible stench! What happened?” One asked as they got to work cautiously.

GM CockRoach

El’s first stop was to collect her uniform at the decontamination area and don it. Her beliefs did not set her up in any way as a prude or wilting flower if that was the applicable term. Everything had happened so quickly and once emerging on the bridge with the beast she had felt her fight and flight reflexes powering up along with her adrenaline. She had been ready to fight yet had seen the flash of fear in Lt Green’s eyes as he swung at the creature. That had been the first moment of vulnerability she had seen in the Lt. What had been more startling to her was Helena’s actions in shooting the wounded beast. El’s principles were such that life was sacred. While the creature was deadly and dangerous still it grated that Helena would simply shoot it like that at the slim justification that the Vulcans recommended it. It changed how El looked at the pilot who was capable of such a swift, deadly act.

Changed, El moved to Warrant Office Jackson’s quarters. He answered after a minute, shaving cream smeared over half his face and a cream towel draped over his shoulders. The end of it had SS Whitestar embroidered in blue. Curiously he had a ball cap on that had SS Saratoga on it. At his furrowed brow El said, “Lt Green needs us on the bridge for a fix. A … creature made a mess of the tactical panel.” Tyler Jackson shifted the toothpick that had been on one side of his mouth to the other. “You’re not messing with me, are you Ensign? The only creature I know of is Walters’ dog.” El shook her head. “Stowaway,” she said. “Six legs. Killed two crew. Samuels in decon.” The last came out as a whisper and Jackson’s toothpick stopped moving. “I’ll be right there.”

El took that minute to find a comms and call to Ensign Gagarin to tell him to bring up Rick with him with a Crawler to search the vents. In the remaining seconds, El thought that that duo was the worst to pull up with Sasha’s paranoia and Rick’s own fears. Perhaps this may help them with that. WO Jackson’s quarters was on C Deck. As they wound down to F Deck to collect tools, El explained the damage to him and the creature. “Never known anything like that,” he said in a tone that had a drawl to it. He’d told someone once in the lounge that that was a good Southern accent. Emerson Fawkes, from British ‘upper crust’ as someone had said, thought the accent was ‘provincial’.

They made it to the bridge just ahead of Sasha and Rick, but behind the clean up crew. Making their way around the maintenance crew they came to Lt Green who pulled himself up to his feet. “Board will need replacing as will this console top. Whatever it did, it knocked out the targeting and firing controls. I don’t know if we have parts but that’s for you two to figure out. Scanners are damaged but may be able to be fixed.”

He saw Rick and Sasha coming onto the bridge. “Carry on, then,” he said and Jackson beat El to the reply, her own ‘Aye aye, sir’ being a soft echo. Green moved past them toward the two, noting too that Walters had brought the dog with him. He was going to get himself into trouble if he kept that up, and not only from him.

Meanwhile, Jackson said, “Ensign, I’ll look at the connections and boards underneath. Y’all have the finer fingers so work that control console off and we can birddog what we have to work with.” El glanced over at Lt Green who had turned and looked at them, and her in particular, with a speculating eye. El had done something wrong and she hadn’t even started. Sighing, she pulled out a magnetic driver; with the clear consoles the screws keeping it down were under it, and she took care to not damage it and the membrane under it any more than it was. Still even El could see that one area of damage was right over the targeting and firing controls and they looked blackened around the membrane.

El, WO Jackson, Ens Gagarin, PO Walters ..

Over by the comm’s station NE Paul spoke, “..So do we want to try to look into this comm signal more? Also we got that video processed and scans for this natives below the ground if anyone wants to review those fully too?” he said.

GM CockRoach

As El and Jackson fussed with the tactical console, El found herself splitting her attention between that and what NE Paul was saying. Comms signal? Natives? She had heard of them when she was down there but not seen anything remotely. Only the big cats. She was still perplexed by the drop off of the power and wanted to look at that issue; if they couldn’t sustain power past a certain level in drilling then extracting minerals no matter how rich would be impossible shy of open pit mining - something that was very frowned upon in this day and age. But then even if they could dig, would it not still affect any machinery that descended that far? Maybe.
“Have you reset the board, Ensign?” WO Jackson asked, bringing her back to the present. It was in her hand and he knew it. She snapped back to the now and seated it. The wiring was .. bad. “The board is in,” she said after a minute but the cabling that runs to the console LED is shot. Hang on,” she said, wriggling in farther and shining a light. “No, no good. The creature caused the leads to fry at the console membrane. That whole membrane needs to be changed out if we hope to send commands through to the armory controls.”

Meanwhile, Sasha had the Crawler out and, with a small tablet control pad was running it through a diagnostic. “Camera good, remote response good, sound good, sensors good.” He looked toward Rick and the dog of whom the latter, in Sasha’s estimation was looking at the crawler as something that was inferior to it. Rick was petting the dog in between making small adjustments to the crawler. It looked like something Sasha put together with blocks when he was a child. And as ugly. “Set it up,” he said to Rick who picked up the unit. It was smaller than the dog but it’s six spider like legs went out wider - though they were adjustable. And probably heavier, Sasha thought.

Rick picked it up and looked at Nessa. He thought the dog could do a better job but if there was another of them creatures in there the dog would be toast and they were looking for damage. Reaching up he slipped the Crawler unit into the broken duct and slid it in. “Set, sir,” he said to Sasha who brought up the control screen. Setting it down on an unused console he made room for Rick to be there too. “Take notes on damages,” he said. The unit would log it and record it but having notes would at least give them a starting point. Rick pulled out his own tablet unit and prepared to make notes. “And forward ..” Sasha said as his fingers moved on the control pad and set the Crawler in motion.

• Sasha and Rick

Naomi aided in collecting samples best she could. She pulled out the swabs and ran it down the length, collecting what sample she could. Her hand lowered into the tube before snapping it shut. Satisfied it was secure, she passed it off.

Once she finished her section, she caught the mention of the comm signal. She moved in closer as she listened to the conversation.

Sadly. technology repair wasn’t her best skill.

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci

With the crawler in motion damage seemed more or less non-existent within the crawl space that led down to deck 2, it would be a time consuming process to check all the duct work on the ship but so far it seems beyond some basic light scratching here and there on the walls as it skittered about.

GM CockRoach

Seeing little help she could provide, Noami moved to the science lab to examine the samples.

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci