[snip]

By this point the Merrimack had pulled up alongside the mining post, and after another moment the transporter chief reported the man was aboard though ‘smelling riper then roadkill roasting in a swamp’. He was currently on his way by escort by NE’s to sickbay. Meanwhile securing the pod was an easy enough matter, tractoring it into their shuttle bay. The NE’s there reported they would have a report in the next half hour or so.

Lastly attempts to hack into the colony’s computer networks was a fairly easy enough task, at least for less secure access points. Local news reports, public records, all that were easy enough. Through this they were able to confirm that both men were who they said they were and both currently listed as dead due to ‘work place accident, and loss of contact’ 7 to 8 months ago. Record scans to do more things like try to figure out why nothing off planet was being done or acknowledged though would take a bit.

McDuff started flicking through the newly acquired information as soon as it began arriving in. He read as quickly as he could, he was looking for any nuggets of information that might relevant. He wanted to be as clued up as possible.

Beyond the above mentioned bit of information easily accessible without worrying too much of triggering security measures nothing else came up. Now if they wanted to try their hands at hacking into more secure places like government or local military sources they could but the risk of being detected rose some.

=/\= Can you hack into any local military or government sources? I acknowledge the inherent risk involved. Risk is part of the game if you want to sit in this chair. =/\=

Captain Glen grew impatient waiting for the results of scans and searches to be returned. A half hour wait seemed like an eternity. He contacted Doctor Cross in the Sickbay again. =/\= Bridge to Sickbay. Captain speaking. Have you determined whether Michael Duck is fit to be questioned yet? =/\=

=/\= Captain he’s just arrived in sickbay , I will let you know how he is psychologically …Cross out =/\ came her swift reply .
There was some background discussion while the channel remained open…

In the meantime the Merrimack had returned to a distant orbit nearer to but not in direct orbit of Unity. Scans were much as they showed before in their earlier pass.

=/\= Captain he’s resting for the time being but should be awake in a few hours ....I’ll contact you back when he’s fully conscious =/\= .

=/\= Okay! He could save us a lot of time if he can tell us what has been going on here. I’ll wait for you call. =/\=

She flicked open her transmitter =/\= Captain the man is fully awake and Hunter is going to escort him to your office ..Cross out =/\=

=/\= I’m a little busy on the Bridge right now. Commander Royal can take charge of the interviewing if there is no one else… =/\= said Glen then added, =/\= I don’t expect the Spanish Inquisition, just an informal chat. =/\=

Lance had been sat hunched over the science station, lost in both the information the computer had brought up and his own data search on similar events. The discussion of what had happened to the outpost had been zoned out as he read about the possibility of lights in the sky the data was fascinating and then the probability of craters 2 kilometres wide… That was interesting but over a 50 kilometre area that would have caused considerable dust to be kicked into the atmosphere or at the very least some massive tidal shifts. But apparently it didn’t cause any

He did find him self checking the ships information banks for How many mega tones of explosives is that the equivalent of? Followed by what size asteroid would make a 2 kilometre crater? He was a scientist but he didn’t have every piece of scientific knowledge memorised, and why memorise everything when you had a ships computer to do it for you.

However his searching did take him down some rabbit holes. He went looking for reports of similar events, were some cultures scared of lights in the sky. He sat back rubbing his eyes. “Ack!” He exclaimed in frustration “If I didn’t deal in facts and science I’d be looking to John Wyndham for the answers.” He tapped his pencil on his knee, “I know we’re meant to stay here but I think we’ll only get answers about the lights by going to the craters. Do we know if this group of settlers had any superstitions?”.

“We don’t really know much about them at all…” Glen replied, “…due to their long period of separation, but as my Yeoman pointed out at the meeting earlier, these groups tend to shroud themselves in secrecy, to believe in conspiracy theories, follow non-standard religions and religious practices, and they are slow to adopt new technology and ideas, all of which make a belief in superstations more likely. It is something you can investigate further in the records, or else get Lt. Cara Meow, our resident Xenoanthropologist and Sociologist, on to it. Of course, the interview of Michael Duck may tell us a lot more, or the local military or government library systems, if we can manage to hack into them.”

“By the way, have you managed to hack into the government and military local systems yet?” Glen asked Lance.

Lance looked over at the boss, “Righto Captain I’ll get Lt Meow onto that”. The curiosity of what was going on on the planet was bugging him. “I think I’ll also look into the local Comms and systems a little more…” He said as he started the probe on hacking into the planetary and military systems. “Bonus if it’s giant plants.” He muttered to himself.

=/\= Commander Royal. Please interview the man we rescued in Conference Room-B, Deck 3. I believe Doctor Hunter is waiting for you with Cara Meow. Glen out! =/\=

“This orbit? Does it hide us from Unity’s planetary sensors?” Glen asked. “Enable threat detection and automatic alert logic monitoring, and enable periodic scans, please.”

NE Boline spoke from an auxiliary station. “..Their scanning technology is almost 75-80 years old captain, unless they specifically looking for us and what signals would still output with minimal output like this, even then their chance to pick us up on scans is minimal. Only real risk is if someone has a surface telescope and is visually looking skyward and comes across us.” she said.

“Thank you NE Boline,” replied the Captain.

As Lance started delving into the governmental and planetary systems, the work became much more careful. He had to keep balancing not trigging various security and privacy measures. But again since said operating systems were using the earliest versions of LCARS 1.0 from the 2230s at best in places even with the hand done patches and updates he was over the next hour or so able to delve into a few accessible databases and records.

Looking into records over the past 7-8 months he found one entry in the government’s weather database that showed back then there had been a report of a meteor shower, with what seemed to show ‘several small atmospheric entry points along the southern end of the planet. These matched the large impact craters they had detected. However, no records related any tidal or disaster events. He also found signs that the entry listing had been edited about 2 or so weeks after its original creation indicating likely the actual original report had been altered and the original fully deleted and wiped.

Further around this time period after the shower was a record indicating a colony wide quarantine of information and transit would be implemented. The reason given seemed to be due in part to the earlier meteor shower which supposedly had released a contagious sickness in that area of impact. However, cross referring this to any habitable areas of impact and none were present, further no other records showed any intakes for any kind of sicknesses near the coastal areas for hospitals. On the surface looking at things Lance could suspect some other reason to implement a colony wide quarantine of any traffic or comms in or out was covered up with this excuse and in all this time seems the colonists didn’t care to question it, didn’t care if it was a cover up, were in on the cover up in the majority, or something of the sort. Given there was no signs of protest, and everyone seemed happy, well cared for, content, and fed etc it was likely they were not questioning any other motive for the cover up or didn’t know there was a cover up.

Finally with the access he had now it wouldn’t be too hard to implant a few fake IDs if an away team wanted to beam down in an remote area and go in on foot under cover. It seems all the security and ID check systems across the planet were all eventually connected and verified by the central colony master computer which he now had access too. While he couldn’t do more obvious things like shutting down stuff, or accessing bigger secure information. Implanting fake ID’s that would pass any checks to make it seems like they were just normal colonists and had a home out in the woods like a hermit group or such would be doable. The fact such was already present from what he could review by those who lived more ‘off the grid’ partly would make a good cover.

In short it seemed if they were to get more answers they would have to go planet side in some form, perhaps in either least one or two groups. One option would be for a group to go down in a shuttle modified to handle the water depths at one or both impact sites, and/or another then go down via transporter in local garb with faked IDs as one of those remote hermit groups coming into one of the towns for supplies and news etc.

When Lance passed this research to the Captain, the Captain realised it would be useful if the Layanna and Cara had this while questioning Michael Duck. “Could you send this new information down to the interview room please,” Glen asked.

• Glen, CO