That We Might See (Part 4 of 8)

Posted on 22 Feb 2019 @ 4:51pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Commander Scarlet Blake & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Lieutenant Amaranai Franklin & Commander Marisa Wyatt & Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant & Lieutenant JG Tris Shizn & Lieutenant JG Matthew Plumeri & Lieutenant Commander Ryan Alexander & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Petty Officer 1st Class T'Lin & Cadet Senior Grade Jemima de la Coeur
Edited on on 22 Feb 2019 @ 4:58pm

3,297 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 17 - Crystal of Life
Location: USS Galileo-A, Latari System
Timeline: MD 01, 0300 hrs

Previously, on That We Might See (Part 3)...

In the depths of outer space within the distant colonies of Latari, the two Federation starships began to streak through the system at high velocity towards their new destination. From the bridge of Galileo, the various outer planets appeared to slowly pass by the vessel but their massive size gave a false sense of distance to the untrained eye. It was a thirty-second burn that ended up feeling like a minute.

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

"Captain, approaching Latari B III, five seconds," Darius finally called out.

Galileo and Trial both slowed from high impulse and arrived in orbit of the green and blue Class-M world. The triple-light reflections of the three system stars cast an eerie yellow and red hue across the planet's atmosphere, almost making it appear to be basking in flames from various angles. Several hundred kilometers below them, in lower orbit, the debris field the two ships had previously identified now became visible.

The hull of a damaged Steamrunner-class Starfleet vessel could be seen against the backdrop of the planet. It appeared mostly intact, however several sections of the secondary hull -- including an entire warp nacelle -- were missing from the superstructure, shredded off from the main struts with what appeared to be blast markings. The Nova II- and Miranda-class both adjusted heading towards the adrift ship.

Within the Galileo's bridge, sensor and comms data began to flood into the command center.

Ryan looked over the data that was feeding into his station. While the distress beacon was Federation in origin, it took him a few heart beats to double check the results against the ships in the database. "Ma'am, distress beacon confirmed as, USS Franconia NCC-71611. Sending you data on the Franconia now." Ryan said as he forwarded current relevant ship statistics such as deployment schedule, commanding officer, executive officer, and current crew roster to the captain and Allyndra.

At Science I Ensign Ullswater was doing her best to keep herself together and professional as the grim tidings from sensors arrived on her screen. She'd never scanned a wreck before - it scared her slightly, the data showed corridors and interiors likely not to different from that of their own ship, now exposed to the vacuum of space. The Galileo suddenly felt like a very fragile object.

Among the debris strewn out before them were a number of escape pods too. The ensign collated the data and sent it to the captain's access point leaving out her ruminations of how awful those last days in the pods must have been.

As the vessels approached the planet and the debris field that Amaranai had spotted, her hands began to trace across the LCARS to see what she could find. Scanning the field, there were no signs of anything initially. After several minutes, the scanners picked up on something. The security officer adjusted the focus and began to zero in on something specific.

"Captain," she said after another moment. "Sensors have detected one lifesign within the debris field. Very faint. There is a pod within the debris field."

Alllyndra did not wait she pressed her comm badge and called sickbay, "Sickbay, Allyndra here, life pod with faint life sign, prepare for severely injured most likely radiation burns."

The quick preparation from the second officer was welcome, but Lirha was distressed by the news despite being prepared for the worst. "Only one lifesign..." she whispered to herself. "There were over two-hundred officers and crew aboard that vessel," she added, looking through the Steamrunner-class' compliment on the center console. "Are there no other survivors?"

Amaranai heard the captain's order and checked the sensors once again. She took a few moments to verify her results. She looked to the captain and shook her head.

"Negative, captain," she said. "No other lifesigns can be found within the debris field."

Jemima found the colony on the planet--or where the colony used to be. "Oh, my!" she said, double-checking the readings on her console. "Captain ma'am, I'm getting some freaky readings from the planet. I ain't seen nothing like it, and neither has the computer. It looks geological in nature, but the radioactive levels are off the chart. There's also way too much frictional atmospheric charging going on." It was so exciting to see something so strange that she had a hard time keeping her bum from doing a little dance.

The captain looked to the cadet with a frown, then to the blue-collared ensign. "What? Geological?"

"That's what it looks like captain." Ullswater responded her mind still trying to follow down the grim path of reasoning that the sensors were inexorably leading towards. Her hands dashed across the console doing everything she could to try and and get the sensors confirm the contrary of what they were saying. "I can see huge variations in the asthenosphere, Schönherr perturbations which are impacting far into the lithosphere too." She shook her head and turned to the captain. "I'm not sure exactly what happened yet, but it was definitely catastrophic."

"On screen," Lirha said in reply. Her knowledge of atmospheric science was limited so she needed to see it for herself with her own eyes.

Ullswater raised an eyebrow and turned back to the station activating the visual sensors and projecting an image up onto the screen. "There it is captain." She turned to take a look herself at what what appeared.

Across the main viewscreen, the standard camera angle fore of the bow switched to a zoomed-in view of the planet. The Class-M exoworld looked majestic from space, composed of bright blue seas and several large land masses peeking out beneath the white clouds. But then they saw it -- like a blister on the skin, it was a circular formation of glowing red and orange volcanism where the Federation colony site was supposed to be located. The surface deformation was so intense it was easily visible beneath the thick black clouds of volcanic ash spewing into the upper atmosphere. The radioactive and volatile particles were super-charged with magnetic energy, and released non-stop waves of dirty lighting throughout the ejecta.

Lirha leaned forward in her seat with her eyes fixated to the screen and mouth hanging half-open. "Magnify..." she managed to say through her incredulity.

Wordlessly the Ensign Ullswater tapped away at her terminal. Wordless partially because there was nothing to say in the face of what she'd just seen - a landscape tearing itself apart.

The main viewer blinked twice to zoom in by several factors to a 100 kilometer radius of where the colony should be. Instead of habitable green land and small lakes -- including organic crops and flora and fauna -- there appeared to be nothing but molten rock and desolation. The entire surface of the large terrestrial location was pulsing with both magma ejections and volcanic flows.

Lamar sat at the conn with eyes locked to the viewscreen, seeing all of this for the first time in his life. He wasn't sure what he was looking at but his first thought had been some sort of meteor impact on the surface. That would explain the circular radius of the event. But when the captain had zoomed the scope in, none of it looked like an impact crater. He'd seen those plenty before during his time in the orbital drop Marine battalions -- the crashed ships, escape pods and space bombardment scorch marks...but these terrain patterns didn't resemble any of that. "It almost looks like the surface is bulging. From the inside," he remarked.

"That wouldn't be a bad analogy from what I can see." Ensign Ullswater responded with a slight tone of disbelief mesmerised by what she was seeing on the screen. She shook her head - the first time in months she felt like she could stretch her geological muscles and it just so happened to be involving the destruction of a federation colony.

Sofie dragged herself out of the brief reverie and turned her head back to the science station. Now was not the time for gawping, now was the time for looking for answers. "I don't think I've seen anything like this before." She mused quietly.

"It's hideous," Lake said, frowning despite himself. He spoke just as softly as Sofie --mostly murmuring to himself-- but he was sat close enough to the Captain, he knew she had probably heard him. Perhaps many in Starfleet would have looked to such a new planetary expression as something wondrous, but Lake could only the see the electric, ashy clouds as another Romulus burning.

Ryan studied the viewscreen with the rest of the crew. It reminded him of something that he had seen in Iceland on Earth, but on a much larger scale. He recalled watching the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano when the frictional charging from the debris of rock fragments, ash, and ice particles within the volcanic plume during the eruption caused a startling but wondrous lightning show. Though the scene before him also felt odd. He couldn't quite place or put to words what was troubling him about this situation, but he kept his eyes open and going over the incoming data wanting to be able to alert the captain and crew in case anything caught his eye.

"This can't be natural," Jemima whispered. It looked more like someone had created it for some disaster video. Or maybe it was science fiction? She could almost imagine dragons flying through the sky. Or demons. No, demons would be more appropriate for this place.

Captain Saalm snapped out of her momentary fixation and realized the mystery of the colony site was also accompanied by the more urgent duty to rescue the lone Starfleet survivor who'd been reported. She leaned over close to Allyndra and spoke to her, putting a firm hand on the Akkadian's forearm. "Get down to sickbay and oversee this recovery. We need as much information as possible from this person. We can't afford to loose them." she said with urgency.

Allyndra would have preferred to stay on the bridge but the order was logical and she did not object at all. She nodded and said, "Yes, captain." She turned and left the bridge.

Lirha watched Allyndra depart to her area of special then she looked to Lake, the other senior officer next to her sitting on one of the nearby side rails. "Come, new Number One," she invited with a motion to the now-vacant XO's chair. "You wanted to be here for something like this, yes?"

A flutter of no less than three different emotions wiped the sour frown from Lake ir-Llantrisnat's mug. There was naked surprise, quickly followed by mortal terror, but it was all wrapped up in a bow of gleeful delight. "Tt," Lake breathed a quick, rattled laugh between his teeth. "If I recall correctly," Lake said, his voice like buttery caramel, "I wanted to whisper in your ear, while we outsmarted a conniving Sheliak." --Despite his protestations, Lake was immediately rising from his side rail and crossed to the XO's chair beside the captain. Lake took the chair as if he'd been born to it and he waggled a single finger at the viewscreen-- "I haven't had to outsmart anything like that since I navigated a runabout through the nuetronic storm that ate the Honshu."

"What is your professional analysis?" she quickly wondered with intrigue derived from his experience. She asked not only to probe his thoughts, but also her own as all successful command teams did. "Two Federation colonies out here along the farthest frontier with no prior signs of distress...what could have happened here? What could do this?"

Rocking his shoulders back against the chair, Lake folded his arms across his chest and he squinted at the viewscreen. The appraising look in his eyes remained, searching, as he was, for patterns beyond the facts and figures being offered by the sensors. "I was assigned to a search and rescue team that was mostly of Human origin," he said, "many of them from Earth. I remember they would look at something like this... Widespread destruction, serving nobody's benefit, on a scale that hardly obeys the rituals we call physics. They would call this a Cthulhu event." --He looked to Lirha with a quick glance, to share his Romulan interpretation-- "An aehallh event." --As if pulled by an invisible string, Lake leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees, because his dark eyes were transfixed by the screen once again-- "It feels destructive to our little hearts, but it serves a cosmic purpose we don’t have the ability to perceive... nor even to comprehend."


Deck 7, Astrometrics

Marisa looked at the images as the scans focused on the planet itself. It looked almost apocalyptic, as if the planet was still forming -- or dying. But an extinction event like this took hundreds, if not thousands, of years to develop. She'd read over the initial science expedition's reports and there was nothing to indicate that something like this was even possible.

The Chief Science Officer then sent out a call to the rest of the department, asking for volunteers. "I want atmospheric, geologic and geothermic analyses. I'll take visual and electromagnetic readings so we have plenty to refer to later." She looked at the other scientists. "Take your pick, we've plenty of work to do."

T'Lin nodded and replied,. "Very well, I can do geologic and geothermic analysis." She turned to start the analysis or at least what she could get from the sensors through the storm generated from the vulcanism below. She could not help but remark, "Even if the colony was not consumed by the eruption, the amount of material in the atmosphere would induce vulcansilicanosis quickly and lead to death."

Marisa nodded. "See what you can find."

Matt listened as Sandoval handed out her orders to the Science team. He heard the various science crew pickup tasks as small teams formed to better delegate the workload. That was when he realized that he would need to logoff this workstation and find another place to work. This terminal was configured for Astrometrics analysis. He said to the assisting crewman, “This terminal is all yours now. I’ve left in the templates we were using. You don’t have to keep using them if you find something better. But here they are,” he said as he swiped them to the left-hand side of the terminal where they created their own “fence” and arranged themselves waiting to be used while they collected data. Matt logged off the terminal and said, “Thanks for the use of the term.” He took a quick look at the lab and discovered that there was still a need for atmospheric analysis. Addressing himself to Lieutenant Sandoval he asked, “Permission to leave Astrometrics ma’am? Multi-purpose lab ‘B’ on deck four has the ‘AURAE’ sensor suite array that will give us a global picture of the troposphere – from ground level up to around 10km. It was configured based on the last survey’s we had from the colony and will use four instruments that detect infrared, ultraviolet and radio waves to measure temperature and pressure, and the concentrations of dozens of different trace chemicals such as methane and CFCs. Much of these more damaging effects of active vulcanism is thought to happen in the transition zone between the troposphere and the overlying stratosphere above. But we won’t know for sure, until we get detailed scans back. Could take a few hours. With your permission, I can start that right away.”

"Good idea. That data will be important to finding an answer. Keep me informed of your progress." She made a notation of what Plumeri was doing in case she had to move on to pass the information on to someone else.

"Aye!", Matt replied and left the room heading for Deck Four, multi-purpose lab II.

She turned to Tris. "Lieutenant, would you like to play scientist for a couple of hours?"

Tris had been a silent observer through most of this, and hesitated for just a second before replying, “Yes Ma’am. Whatever you need.”

Marisa smiled, noting the hesitancy. "Thank you. What are you most comfortable with? We need more information on what caused the destruction of the starship, if it was related to the radiation or vulcansilicanosis."

“Alright,” Shizn replied as he thought for a second. “I’ll begin reviewing the sensor data and logs since arriving in the system. Hopefully I can find a detail that might explain at least part of this.” Tris then walked out of astrometrics to one of the sensor labs for him to work.

Finally, Marisa turned to Scarlet. "Ma'am, anything you can do to help would be appreciated."

T'Lin looked at what readings they could get. Even with the link up with the Trial it was not so easy to parse data from the interference they were getting. "That is unusual, not what one would find with a volcanic eruption," she spoke not really to anyone. "There are materials in the ejecta that would indicate lots of heavy metals including radioactive ones. That is something someone would expect with core material not mantle material."

Blake's eyes were still on the seething mass of fire and ash moving across images like the backdrop to a circle of hell. But for all the analysis around her, and the visions more suited to a journey through the underworld, her mind kept returning to the same, sickening thought. All of those people. She forced her eyes away, moving to look over T'Lin's shoulder at her readouts. "Any theories on how they're there in that case?"

"Speculation only at this point ma'am." T'Lin replied. "Normally the only way one would see something like that in an eruption would be if something or perhaps someone had bored deep into the planet or possibly bored out."

"Any evidence to support that theory?" Marisa asked.

"Nothing as of yet due to interference from the radiation and dust. Perhaps," T'Lin thought for a moment. "If we can get permission to move around the other side from the eruption. While the dust has gone global as well as the radiation it is still not as thick according to scans on the far side yet."

Marisa nodded. She glanced at Scarlet for permission and tapped the comm panel. "Astrometrics to bridge. Any way we could get a look at the far side of the planet to compare readings?"

The CSO's query was answered promptly enough by the captain who seemed preoccupied with another important matter. "Astrometrics, standby. We're retrieving a survivor from the debris field..."

To be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

CWO3 Lamar Darius
Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

CMDR Allyndra Warraquim
Chief Medical Officer/2XO
USS Galileo-A

ENS Sofie Ullswater
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

LT Marisa Sandoval
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

PO2 T'Lin
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Warraquim]

LTJG Matthew Plumeri
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

LT Amaranai Franklin
Deputy Security Officer
USS Galileo-A

LT Lake ir-Llantrisant
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo-A

ENS Ryan Alexander
Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

CDT(SR) Jemima de la Cour
Scientist's Mate
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Sandoval]

LTJG Tris Shizn
Senior Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A

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