Cave Redux (Part 2 of 8)

Posted on 10 Sep 2014 @ 11:32pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain Jonathan Holliday & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Amon Mormont & Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Stark & Lieutenant Aria Rice & Lieutenant JG Grayson Jones & Lieutenant Asahi Kita & Lieutenant Jacob Pendleton & Lieutenant Jared Nicholas & Ensign Jaana Voutilainen & Lieutenant Elijah Williams IV, M.Sc. & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Petty Officer 1st Class Siren Hex Saalm

3,169 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: Lyshan III - Uridium Mine, Section LV855-LV900
Timeline: MD 07 - 1130 hrs

Previously, on Cave Redux (Part 1)...

"Excuse me Commodore, I have a scientific study that I would like to test down there which I discussed with Pendelton. Such a large grouping of people and equipment though would interfere with the results. Thus I would like to split off with perhaps one other person."

"I object strongly," Stark said quickly with wide eyes, glancing to both his fellow security members. He was pleased to have more security back up this time. "As team security, I mean...I've been down there twice now, each time someone has been either killed or seriously injured, and that was with a team around them. To split two people off on their own in that place would be beyond dangerous..."

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Elijah had listened carefully to the questions that were posed and the answers that were given, he wanted to be sure he took everything in this time around. There could be no mistakes. Then a man from security spoke and his attention was drawn to that. Again he listened and what was said seemed agreeable. As a scientist, he had hated hearing the words 'strongly object' but in this case he had to agree with the security guy. It was just too risky to be doing anything on their own, it was best to stay in a group. He had to admit there was some disappointment on his part, he wanted to explore more and get samples and study and pick at the rockface, but he also wanted to live to see another day. That, at least this time, outweighed his geological curiosity.

"Beyond dangerous, it would be plain stupid!" Aria said and shook her head, frowning. "Yeah, I am with Stark. Strongly, strongly, majorly strongly object on the grounds that we are already trying to sort out one mess, we don't...need another one," she added and looked over at Stark, with a small shrug. She knew where he came from. She hoped everyone else did too.

"It is Captain Holliday's decision. He is your team leader and CO, and he will be in charge once you arrive in the mine. I trust him to make the correct choices during your investigation," Lirha said plainly enough. Although she agreed with the idea of not separating into small groups, she didn't want to publically give her own personal opinion of what proper procedure should be and potentially undermine Galileo's captain before he and his team even arrived at their destination. He had saved her life more than once in the past, and she had the utmost respect for his decisions...especially under duress.

Jared and the Captain weren't exactly best friends, if Holliday even had friends, much less best ones, nevertheless he did trust the man to make the right decision, so he didn't bother voicing his agreement with those who opposed the doctor's insane idea.

"Alright that's enough discussion - we have a mission to complete. Take your positions people. We will deal with each hurdle as we come to it as Starfleet officers - we are trained for this sort of thing, so let's get the job done."

John deepened his voice in order to cover up the degree of uncertainty he still felt. The simple answer was that he had no idea how this mission was going to proceed and what exactly they were going to come across - there simply were too many variables to try and predict.

The team moved over to the transporter pad and took up their respective positions as ordered. Lirha walked back towards the standing operations console where she prepared to initiate the transporter sequence for the first six crew, but not before giving the team one last bit of information while she scanned and manipulated the targeting scanners. "I have found a suitable beam-in point, just in front of the secondary access lift about half-a-kilometer from the control room. I am not detecting any life signs but there appears to be residual EM radiation. I am not sure what it is from. Good luck."

Moving her green fingers across the controls, she started the transporter sequence and looked up to watch as the first group dematerialized in the familiar bright blue molecular stream. She briefly waited for the next group to step up onto the pad, then repeated the procedure until it was now just her alone in the room.


Lyshan III - Uridium Mine, Section LV855-LV900

Two sets of cyan particle swirls signaled the arrival of the away team into the heart of the uridium mine as the entire group materialized safely at their designated coordinates. Almost immediately, the most apparent observation was the lighting, or lack of. The normally-present ambient fixtures which had been installed into each tunnel's ceiling to allow the miners to work, were apparently offline, and several kilometers below the planet's surface there was not a single light present to guide the way save for those attached to the away team's EVA suits. A light haze was also present in the tunnel, and seemed to linger without any apparent air source to ventilate the corridor.

Allyndra was surprised as she felt the transporter effect fade away. The place was pitch black. That troubled her, why would the lights be out she wondered and then pulled her medical tricorder.

John felt less than comfortable in the darkness and wasted no time activating the additional torch on his phaser rifle, shouldering the weapon as he scanned the perimeter - he might have been the Captain, but his tactical training was still as strong in his mind as the day he was first made a security officer as an Ensign.

"Mr Quinn, Mr Kita - would you be so kind as to take a look at those lights? Security personnel - start setting up transport enhancers so we have a beam out location established."

"Yep, definitely deja-vu...." Siren murmured with a frown, glancing around before moving to help security.

After materializing in the cave Jaana couldn't see a thing. It was pitch black. After some others had activated their lights she started to see some of her surroundings. She held her weapon with one hand so she could activate her tricorder with the other. When it didn't displayed anything she gave it a smack on the site and the machine came to life.

Transporting was never the hard part for Elijah, it didn't cause him anxiety nor did he have even the slightest phobia concerning it. However, what was disorienting was transporting into a dark cave. It was pitch black and it was like transporting into nothingness. Even though he could feel that he was grounded, it did cause his anxiety to rise just slightly. Once lights of EVA suits began to illuminate the surrounding area his heart beat slowed back to normal. The murkiness of the area reminded him of being in a lake where sand was kicked up. But the bigger question was why the lights were out? Sabotage? The supposed ghost? Just like the chief medical officer, Elijah pulled his tricorder and began to take scans as he inched forward.

Asahi was about half a step behind the Captain in turning on any lights he may have had, narrowing his eyes at the apparent lack of mining lights in the area. "... Will do, Captain." Tricorder out, he frowned deeply as his scans proved absolutely futile. "Sir, I think we have a power problem in the area. Something cut out the whole supply down here."

Quinn activated his headlamps and followed the trailing wiring to the main generator. "Got it!" yelled Quinn. "Half the generator has...merged into the floor. The power source for the generator is gone, under about a 3 meters of solid rock."

"That's unfortunate." Quick to follow behind the CoB, more to learn than to interfere, Asahi examined damages, frowning. "... That'd explain the lights."

As the away team began to move down the tunnel, the squish of their boots in the muddy earth provided an eerie soundtrack to their trek. To the trained eye and those who bothered to look down, several additional footprints could be detected, both belonging to Starfleet EVA boots and another unidentified type of boot. Though hard to see in the darkness, several pock marks came into view on the walls and ceilings, and the further the team moved down the tunnel, the more marks could be seen.

"Look at this," Gabriel said quietly, frowning as he stopped to reach out and touch the wall of the tunnel. He ran his gloved finger along the scorch marks and dipping into the scars in the rock. He'd recognise it anywhere. "Weapons fire."

Allyndra did a scan of the area, "I have residue of several species, mostly human and Cardassian plus..." she shone her light on a particular section of floor where the mud was not so thick. "Looks like a big scuffle here." The thoughts of her experiment had vanished into the blackness.

Aria moved to touch the cave wall, frowning as she shook her head. "Firefight," she said softly. "Phaser fire and...looks like Cardassian disruptor. Could be wrong," she added quickly, before looking around. "So. Not exactly a great thing. Looks like they managed to start their own little conflict."

Jared wasn't much of a phaser guy though he could hold his own in a pinch, he preferred hand to hand if he couldn't talk his way out of a situation, but now, he drew his standard issue weapon, just to be on the safe side.

"Any idea how old?" John replied as he advanced towards the scorch marks, taking a look for himself under the light of his phaser rifle. The markings in some areas were definitely in keeping with Federation weapons, and disruptors did appear to be the most common cause of the remaining damage to the cavern walls.

With tricorder still running scans, Elijah's gaze swept around from ground to cave wall. He could differentiate the boot prints and that was because he got to know his EVA suit from top to bottom quite well over the past few days. The prints weren't in a walking pattern and when Allyndra had mentioned a scuffle, it made sense. The patterns were too inconsistent just for normal walking back and forth. Again questions plagued him, foot prints that looking like a scuffle, phaser fire all over the cave walls. Were the Starfleet personnel and the Cardassians trying to get away from something? Or were they fighting amongst each other? The latter just didn't seem plausible.

He looked at the cave wall where the blast marks were. The pattern was inconsistent and he couldn't believe there were so many misses. "Do you think they were shooting at something else? The pattern looks... erratic." Not that he was a person who knew these things, but something just didn't feel right about the situation. Foot prints that were scuffled, weapons fire all over the cave walls, it just didn't add up. He knew the analysis might be wrong but he had to at least speak up.

The comment was out of her expertise but Allyndra did note life signs finally. "Perhaps someone else can answer that, I detect life signs in that direction." She nodded her chin down the tunnel.

John turned on his heels to face towards the tunnel that his CMO had indicated towards. He had to agree that the damage patterns on the walls were a little unusual in their placement - as if the target was moving erratically, or were multiple in number. Raising his rifle he began to step slowly towards the corridor.

"We aren't going to find anything out staying here....we advance, slowly, and as one group - Rice, take point with me, Stark and Mormont, watch our rear."

Jared was in the middle of the group. He would have preferred being in the lead. His formal training at the Academy hadn't really prepared him for such a role, but his pre-Starfleet days had. He slowly began moving forward.

Allyndra stayed back of the first officers and continued to scan. There was bits of tissue here and there but still signs of life up ahead toward what was indicated on the map as the control room. "I am getting bits of Cardassian tissue remains here and there but also odd left over...not sure what exactly but like we experienced before, a sort of energy signature."

Grayson too was in the middle of the pack. This being his first big away mission, he was scanning intently, letting others lead the way as he followed along for back up, all the while keeping one hand just above his phaser. He was never one to read into gut instincts, right now his were going haywire. With each passing step, Grayson continued to scan the structural integrity of the cave surrounding them, ready to pounce and alert everyone else at less than a moments notice.

"This isn't right," Siren said quietly with a frown, but more to herself, her breath tight in her throat. Her light was focussed on the ground where she was looking at the tracks they were following rather than up ahead. "Backwards and forwards. The Cardassian prints are all over the place, no steady step."

Jared who had worked his way forward a few spaces wasn't looking at the tracks, he was looking all around him, alert for any possible attack or surprises.

Elijah listened to the chatter over the comm in his helmet. When he looked and studied the prints and then the disruptor blasts that peppered the cave wall, he immediately thought it was chaos. But why? What had happened? His own tricorder continued to beep as he moved forward with the group. He was toward the front of the group next to the chief medical officer. He figured her scans were showing the same things his were so there was no need to confer just yet. He was hoping he'd be called upon to step into the action if action were to escalate.

Jacob walked up to Allyndra and whispered, "Well, if we are going to test your theory, anytime while we are here would be good... and I don't care what security says, it could solve this mystery."

"Your correct, perhaps we can slip away in a bit. There is not much room and too many people to set up the monitoring." Allyndra replied.

As the gloom of their collective suit lights moved up the dark tunnel, it lifted the veil away from the gory secrets ahead. Slowly, the shadows slid across a rounded object on the ground, revealing a Cardassian head with grey, mottled skin and stained with stale blood that had dripped from the open mouth, still caught in a wide, open gape from a long since silenced scream. The wide, glassy eyes seemed to stare at the lifeless, stiff body on the other side of the tunnel it had once belonged to.

A deceptively dark set of smudges across the dusty ground led the eye to the grotesquely distorted body that was half trapped in the rock of the wall, crushed by the impossible, horrific trap. Blood had oozed from the ragged stump that had once formed a neck for the removed head, pooling on the dust below in a sticky, thick, reeking mess.

What Elijah saw caused him to swallow hard as he used all his will power not to throw up. It's things like this that make me grateful that I am a geologist, he thought to himself. He had never seen anything like this in his life and he doubt he would ever again. He tried to look away and yet he couldn't, his gray eyes stayed focused on the head. He stared on with just as much fascination as revulsion. His next thought, which was totally out of the blue, was that this was like a Scooby Doo episode that had gone terribly wrong. He half expected the mystery solving teenagers and their talking great dane to be found having met the same fate as the Cardassian. That's a gruesome thought Elijah, he again thought to himself. He shook his head at the absurd thought then looked from the head to no one in particular. "Who or what could have done this?" he said in a low tone but he knew the comm would have still picked up his words.

Grayson too was taken back by the site before him. He was used to being locked away inside the ship, being forced to deal with mechanical matters, the biological mess before him caused Grayson to regain his composure. Looking at the scans he was carrying out, he was answering Elijah's question before he knew the words were coming out of his mouth. "I wouldn't like to guess just now. All I know is, we need to be careful. I've been running scans of the mine since we arrived. However this poor person died, has weakened the structure of the rock formations around here." The screen of the tricorder was a welcomed distraction as Grayson tried not too look at the horror before him. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing to attention, brushing the neck of his suit, making sure Grayson was well aware of his hightened emotions of foreboding and unease.

Jaana walked past the body, trying not to look at it. Just that first look had been enough to get the urge to vomit. She took deep breaths and tried to think of something else. What has she gotten herself into?

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CDRE Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

LTCMDR Dea Mialin
Chief Flight Control Officer/Second Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. Jared Nicholas
Language Specialist
USSGalileo

LT. Asahi Kita
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

PO1 Lyras Ueda
Diplomatic Officer
USS Galileo
[PNPC Kita]

LTJG. Elijah Williams, IV
Geoglogist
USS Galileo

Lieutenant Andreus Kohl
Assistant Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

Lt Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

Capt Jonathan Holliday
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lt. JG Luke Wyatt
Chief Secuirty Officer
USS Galileo

Ens Jaana Voutilaanen
Stellar Cartographer
USS Galilieo

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo

SWO Alexion Wylde
Doctor
USS Galileo
[PNPC Blake]

PO1 Gabriel Stark
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo
[PNPC Blake]

PO2 Siren Hex
Intelligence
USS Galileo
[PNPC Blake]

Master Warrant Officer Amon Mormont
Security
USS Galileo
[PNPC Markos]

Lt. Amynta Markos
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Grayson Jones
ACEO
USS Galileo

Lt. Jacob Pendleton
Chief Research Officer
USS Galileo

CMCPO Markum Quinn
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo

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