With his own work complete for the moment, Ensign Donivas decided to use his personal time to look into Wer Beta III.

Another team was already looking into the problem, and he knew he could simply wait for them to post their results, but he was a little impatient. The Akaali scientist could try to sell it as an independent parallel analysis intended to validate the original team’s results… but in reality, it was just Khiryn’s curiosity.

Wer Beta III was a bit of a scientific anomaly. Its position on the outer edge of its star’s habitable zone meant it should be relatively cold, but instead it maintained a temperate climate. Many Federation scientists believed this was the result of the planet’s geothermal activity and unusually dense atmosphere. There appeared to be a surprising number of climatologists already studying Wer Beta III, and it was easy to see why. If they could determine how the planet regulated the temperature of its biosphere, it could represent a huge leap forward for terraforming. It might even open up new worlds that had previously been deemed unsuitable for the effort.

Khiryn started at the beginning. The initial information suggested that whatever was happening on Wer Beta III was a recent change, but a scientist never took anything for granted. He ran a historical analysis of the planet’s climate data to see if that assumption held up.

Once that was complete, he looked for when the shift had actually begun. It might have seemed sudden to the population, but there could still have been a change in one of the underlying variables of the planet’s biosphere that only became apparent once the rains and storms intensified. Two of the most likely candidates were also the planet’s most unique characteristics… its strong geothermal activity and dense atmosphere.

But neither variable existed in isolation.

Khiryn wanted to know whether either had changed and, if so, whether something else had accidentally or deliberately altered them, or whether the planet’s normally stable systems had simply been pushed beyond their usual equilibrium.

Then he would compare it with other planets that had experienced significant climate changes, whether natural or artificial. Given the number of worlds that had experienced one form of ecological disaster or another, that would likely be an ongoing process.

OOC: This scene is set slightly in the future, after the high-level briefings are complete and information has filtered down to the junior officers.

I am incorporating information the GM revealed in other posts because none of it seemed to be secret. If I’m wrong, I’m more than happy to backtrack and edit.

Ensign Khiryn Donivas - Science Officer - U.S.S. Athena