An ancient mystery, Part 5
Posted on Tue Aug 29, 2017 @ 12:15pm by Fleet Captain Rhea Kennit & Lieutenant Samantha Raylen & Lieutenant Commander Miguel Torres & Lieutenant Penelope Naroot & Lieutenant Cassandra Kennings & Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Lieutenant Arashi Tanaka Mr.
4,075 words; about a 20 minute read
Mission: Silence
Previously on Star Trek Victory!
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"All right," Kennit said. "I want a continual sweep of the area around us using tricorder scans, with one tricorder set for motion detection at all times. I don't want to get caught with our pants down by whatever else might have moved into this ruin and made it home. The goal is to find the rest of the away team and then get out of here. More investigation here is certainly warranted but it's going to need more personnel and equipment which we don't currently have.."
Her dark eyes deep over to lock with those of the Marine Commander. "Major Prime. I am trusting you and your men can ensure life, should we encounter any additional denizens of this world which have made these passageways their erstwhile home.. you can convince them to stay out of our way." It wasn't a question.
Abbot raised his hand to his helmet and flicked his wrist in a salute as he passed the Captain. "Aye Captain, we're more comfortable with aggressive engagements than playing boffin explorers." He raised his rifle and aimed it down the passageway motioning with his finger for his Marines to move out.
Then, with a definite "look" toward the Doctor, she added "Remember Doctor...try to keep up..."
Flicking on her light, she set off down the passageway, following the path taken by the XO and his group.
"Abru-tus,," Nicole grumbled. "I'm a Doctor, not a turtle." She came up behind the Captain, mirroring her steps, keeping her bag gripped in one hand, and her phaser in the other.
The Doctor's grumbled complaint only brought a small smile to the Captain's lips. "I am aware you aren't a turtle Doctor.. though I have seen you eating pizza more than once in the mess hall.." Kennit's comment might not make sense to others, her fondness for old 20th Century cinema films ..even the really bad ones.. creeping out into their banter.
"What's 'peet-sa'?" Nicole said, keeping their rear covered and watching for anything sneaking up behind them.
"Infinitely better as a meal than the plomeek soup or those feed troughs of replicated grass you called "salad"," Kennit replied.
"Plomeek soup would put years on your life," Nicole intoned. "And as for salad, that is what my food eats."
"Bland, boring years devoid of flavor and joy.." Kennit retorted without missing a beat.
"Sounds like the Admiralty," Nicole said.
Team Hunter
Hoping he was back tracking the correct route, Lt. Monsoon paused a moment to try and check his bearings. In the dark, cool tunnels it as easy to get turned around. Focusing on his tricorder, he stopped the scan to listen closely without the devices chimes and chirping... there were sounds coming from somewhere ahead in the dark tunnel!
Light flared at the end of the dark tunnel, and two Starfleet Marines appeared...upon seeing the Lieutenant in the beams of their lights, two Marines immediately stopped and called a challenge. ""Starfleet Marines! Identify yourself!"
At the same time, a third marine with the advance scout group made a call back to the main group. "Major..we just encountered a Lieutenant Willam Monsoon.. no others present.."
"Copy, still no sign of hostiles?"
"No sir."
"Defensive formation, we're right behind you."
Upon receiving the report from Major Prime, the Captain increased their pace and soon reached the smaller chamber where the Marine scouts had located Lt. Monsoon.
"Lieutenant Monsoon! Are there others with you?" the Captain asked as she followed the Marines, Doctor Anderson, Cmdr Torres, and the others who had gone with the Chief Engineer following.
In the meantime Miguel had been tinkering with his combadge. There was nothing wrong with it and as such he doubted there was anything wrong with any of the others. It had to be the minerals that were surrounding them. Without knowing exactly what was causing the interference he doubted he could find away to clear the signal. But that was when the idea to boost the power of his combadge by linking it to his tricorder. Maybe he could create a beacon that the XO and his team could use to find them. At least in theory. Around the time the Captain finished asking Lt. Monsoon if there were others with him is when Miguel activated his modified beacon.
Stepping over to Miguel, Sam offered him a canteen of water. "Here..you haven't had anything to drink in a while..you need to stay hydrated."
Miguel looked at the canteen and took it as he gave her a small nod."Thank you." he told her. The thr truth was that he wouldn't need any for a few days. But only a few people knew that. He handed her back the canteen. When he heard that the others had been in contact he turned off his beacon. It probably wouldn't have worked with whatever was in these rocks anyway.
After being advised that Lt. Monsoon had been in contact with Lt. Tanaka and the XO, the Captain immediately activated her comm badge, "Kennit to away team. If you can hear me...respond."
For his part Alec was unaware of the Captain and her party making contact with Lt. Monsoon. He was engaged in studying the device before him. This had to be the transmitter Rhea had sent them out to find before they knew here be monsters. Yet even as he studied it, he kept ears open for any tell tale skittering or scraping across the stone floor, walls or ceiling. Not that he was under any false assumption he could best one of the beasties in a close encounter but a few seconds warning could come in handy in getting out of harm's way.
"It is good to hear...voice...I am...area that...communications..." was the static filled response from Arashi to the Captain. "I am...looking for a...out and...Commander...and making...to him." The place that he was in was making communicating difficult but he hoped that someway. After he closed comms he made his way to the liutenant and was having trouble seeing due to the low light.. He grabbed a stalactite that had broken from the ceiling and set his phaser to low power and fired at the top to light his way.
He found a switch and pulled it opening a door and he stepped through and started searching for the commander. "Commander Hunter, are you here?"
Acknowledged." the Captain answered. "We will continue to try and work our way to your location. Stay in contact if possible.."
Spotting Torres drinking from a water canteen, Kennit realized she was thirsty as well. Retrieving her own water from her small kit bag, she drank several quick swallows then recapped her bottle and returned it to her bag. Her attention was caught by a pile of debris along the far wall. Walking over, she knelt and began to gently move debris off the larger item which had been partially buried by the detritus of passing ages. The figure was approximately 18 inches in height, and appeared to have been carved from white marble. The appearance of the marble puzzled her. Humanoid in appearance, with an elongated skull and large eyes, it was also quite obviously meant to be male, if the phallus at the juncture of its legs was indeed what it looked like..
A pair of boots appeared at the edge of her view and the Captain looked up to see Torres gazing quizzically at her. "This shouldn't be here."
"What shouldn't be here?" he asked her.
"This is marble.." she told him.
"Nothing unusual about marble being on a planet, is there?" he asked the captain.
"The geological survey of this world did not include the presence of marble. So how did this get here?"
"Hmmm maybe the same way they knew of the Sol system. The people from this world have been there." he speculated.
"We really need to find more than leftover trinkets and damaged murals." The Captain said. "We need something to tell us who these beings were..."
Where they stood, the chamber was lit by golden sunlight streaming in from an opening in the roof where the stones had collapsed long ago due to erosion and growth from plant life which had taken root above. Long vines of deep green shot through with veins of vibrant orange stretched down to the floor. As she watched, a snake or some snakelike creature slithered across a thick vine above, visible for a few seconds and then was gone. The distraction caused by the snake drew Kennit's attention to something else.
The mummified remains of a humanoid life-firm. At a first guess, the being was 3 meters tall in life. Laid out in the rotted remains of what appeared to be armor of some kind, the alien's head was little more than a skull with a few shreds of mummified tissue remaining. Large eye sockets stared up toward the ceiling from a large, elongated skull. "Doctor...come take a look at this. Can you run a scan, estimate how long this being has been here.." the Captain said.
Nicole pulled a tricorder out of her bag and knelt down by the body. Her brow furrowed as she scanned carefully, glancing at the plant life around the walls and the hole in the ceiling. She reached back into her bag, mumbling to herself, pulling out sample containers and a pair of scissors. She clipped pieces of what could have been fabric, or mummified flesh, and sealed them away, returning the vials to her bag before scanning again. "Cass, Penny, back me up on this?" she said, looking at the other two women.
Penny knelt by her and looked the bones over, pulling out her silver wand and passing it over the corpse. She watched the lights blink and swept it again. "Hmm," she said. "Notice the mummification ends where the armor ends?" She and Nicole mumbled over it a moment and Penny shifted to the side as Cass knelt down.
"Not strictly ceremonial," she said, quietly. "Weapon by its side. A sentry. He was on guard when he died, and whatever he was guarding..." she looked at Nicole and nodded.
When the three of them were finished nodding and mumbling to each other, they stood up and Nicole looked around. "It's old. Ancient. The bones have fossilized. However it died--and that I can't tell yet--it was in this room for millennia." She pointed at the ceiling. "That hole? Less than a century old. Maybe just a couple of decades, and I'm guessing something drastic happened to cause it. This place was built to be air tight and humidity free and last forever. I'm guessing most of the desiccation came from its own internal systems rotting out. A DNA analysis will have to wait until we're back on the ship."
"Whatever it was guarding, it's still there and in that direction," Cass said, coming to Nicole's side and pointing down the corridor.
Looking at the Counselor, Kennit replied "What makes you believe that?"
"Because it died here. Not in that moving maze, not at the front of the temple, but in an otherwise nondescript corridor, as close to the object it swore to protect as it could get," Cass said.
"Have the mummy carefully recovered and returned to hpthe shuttle for transport back to the ship's morgue. I want a detailed analysis of this being done.."
Nicole shrugged and threw her arms up theatrically. "Sure, drag a 3-meter, ancient skeleton out of here intact. Simple." She grumbled as she knelt and opened her bag, rummaging through it. "All right," she said, standing up and pointing at two of the marines. "Thick neck and no neck, I need you to pull down two dozen of those vines." They glanced at each other and the Major, and she snapped her fingers. "Now! This man's waited over ten thousand years to leave, let's not keep stalling."
She knelt back down and reached into her bag, pulling out a bundle of metal rods. She untied the bundle and began laying them out, then glanced up at the Captain. "Don't wait for me."
Gazing down the dark passageway which Cassandra had indicated, the Captain was silent as she contemplated the decision before her. She needed to locate Alec and the rest of the missing away team. Embers, and she very much wanted to learn more about who these beings had been, and why there were stone reliefs and other artifacts which did not belong here...items which showed the Sol system, stone figures made of Terran marble based on preliminary scans..
"Down that way huh?" She said at last with a nod toward the dark passage.
"This place isn't just a temple," Cassandra said. "It's a vault, complete with a giant combination lock. They designed these passageways to turn and double back based on a single step. The triggers are far enough apart that anyone who lacks the stride and pattern of their walk wouldn't hit the right triggers. That's why this place is so large and so convoluted, and why we have been unable to reconnect with the rest of the away team. We've been hitting triggers and turning walls in the distance without even realizing it."
She looked around at the corridor. "We are standing inside a massive safety deposit box built into the side of a mountain, and the final guard is lying right here."
"Well then we will just have to approach it like a robbery..." Kennit answered. "We have missing crew mates in here somewhere, so let's get to work and find them."
She flicked her light on,and set out walking down the corridor ..sweeping the area as she walked .. eyes studying the stones and walls as she moved. "It looks like someone came this way.." the Captain said after several paces. "There's a clear boot print here where weather blew dirt down the corridor."
The Captain paused, something wasn't quite right... it didn't take long to realize what. "There's only one print though..and the soil debris is soft and covers the floor.. why only one?"
As the others moved down the passage, Nicole took the vines from the marines, wrapping them around the struts and forming a makeshift litter. She wove in as many as she could to fill in the gaps, and once it was done, she began carefully placing the remains on it as close to their original position as she could. She scanned the floor to ensure she hadn't missed anything then snapped her fingers at her helpers. "Get this back to the ship and deliver it to the morgue. Drop anything and you're dead." As the marines carefully picked up their cargo, Nicole grabbed her bag and went after the team
Frustrated by the lack of progress, without speaking the Captain shook her head and simply set out walking down the corridor.. she'd either find what she was searching for..or she wouldn't.
Knowing that frustrated look that the Captain had on her face Miguel decided to give his make shift beacon a shot again. This time he upped the power and fine tuned the frequency. It might burn out his combadge, but at least he was with others that still had theirs.
Hearing the tell-tale sounds of the engineer recalibrating his comm badge, the Captain cocked her head slightly to listen but continued walking, following the data on the tricorder she held ... her own internal awareness of direction provided by the implants in her skull leading her steadily, carefully forward. She stopped, knelt down and picked up an object from where it had laid half-buried under fallen stones which appeared to have come from a corner by a doorway. Holding it up in the light of her torch,the object glittered and sparkled both brilliant colors as it swayed gently in her hand. A necklace, the clasp broken but the delicate chain and polished stones evidence of sophisticated artistry..
"Hey Doc... check this out.." Kennit said. "Not something I was expecting..."
Nicole came up beside her. "Pretty...looks like a nicer version of the jewelry sold on my planet." She looked over at Cass and passed it along.
"Odd place to have jewelry," Cass said, looking around the corridor. "Might have come from our friend back there." She handed it back to Nicole. "Could indicate rank, status or it's just a culture that likes showing off their wealth. Until we find more examples I won't know."
While the Doctor was looking over the artifact, the comm badges of each member of the away team squawked and emitted an odd sound, like electronic noise for a moment before going silent once more. Craning her head to look at Torres, Kennit said "What was that?"
"Feedback?" Nicole guessed. "Maybe we're close."
*Elsewhere in temple*
Alec ran his tricorder over the device he was now standing in front of, the one he had been walking around for the past few minutes taking readings and recording the signal it was sending out, hoping that if he made it back to the ship, better minds than him could decipher the mystery signal and learn what it was saying. For all he knew it could be broadcasting a message of Christmas cheer. That's if whoever erected this place believed in Christmas. Or maybe it was just saying Hi! He shook his head, he just wanted to get the hell out of here and back to the ship.
Alec continued to study the device and noticed it was repeating a signal. It was definitely broadcasting something and then he realized what it was! Aboard the Victory when Penny first played the signal for Rhea and himself, this was the signal they had heard. Now he knew for certain what it was, it was sending a locator signal. Alerting anyone who happened to be listening that someone was here. He had no idea how long the signal had been broadcasting and he frankly didn't care. He wondered what would happen if he played them back on his tricorder if any other members of the away team could pick it up and perhaps work their way to him.
"Well here goes nothing." He muttered to himself and replayed the signal as it echoed of the stone walls.
Penny's silver wand beeped and she pulled it out of her sleeve, scanning the walls. "Captain," she said, "I'm picking up a secondary signal....like it's echoing the original signal...." She moved up through the group to the Captain and past her, scanning the wall. She looked down and found a slightly uneven stone. "I think this is the door," she said, stepping on the trigger.
A section of thick wall suddenly swung open to a new chamber, and Commander Hunter standing in front of them.
"I win!" Penny said, grinning.
Alec had been studying the alien device and he looked up in surprise as the wall swung open and Penny stood there grinning with Rhea standing not far behind along with the rest of the away team and some new faces he didn't recognize. "Hi." He said foolishly, "Look what I found." He gesturing at the device behind him. "Pretty cool wouldn't you agree?"
"You have an amazing talent for being difficult to find..." the Captain said as she entered the chamber. "You okay?"
Alec nodded. "Aside from wandering around this maze and dodging whatever those creatures are I'm fine," Then leaning in slightly he whispered so only Rhea would hear, "Thanks for caring."
Quickly placing her hand on his shoulder for a moment, she gave him a quick squeeze and the left her hand drop. Nodding toward the device he'd indicated, she asked "And what do we think we have here?"
Miguel went up to the device and began to scan it with his tricorder, Penny hot on his heels, her silver wand out and ready. Then after a few moments he got back up and looked at the Captain and the XO. "Well this device seems to be the source of the signal that drew us here." He told them. "Not only that but the signal is so powerful that it was blocking our own communicators once we got within range of it. Seems it wasn't the rocks after all." he explained. "Give me a few minutes and I can shut it off without causing to much damage to it so we can study it."
"The fact that it still works is amazing," Penny said. "I didn't think the Delta Quadrant had anything this old..."
Alec added his two cents to Miguel's, "I agree with Miguel. When I found it, it was transmitting a signal which I downloaded into my tricorder and played back. I think it was a locator signal."
Cassandra looked through her shoulder bag and pulled out her sketchpad and pencils, then changed her mind and pulled out a small video recorder, going over every inch of the room, first in large sweeps, then methodically over the walls, floor, ceiling and every object in sight. The lens picked up things the brain missed, and she wanted to be able to go over every marking, picture and object in detail later.
Penny ran her wand over the device again, trying to find the power source and map out the machinery. "Miles under," she said to herself. "Natural reactor maybe..."
"I'm not sure shutting it down is something we want to do," Kennit cautioned. "We don't know what impact that might have on any other systems within the complex. For the moment, focus on studying it as it is operating...and let's see if we can get a tricorder connected and pull a raw data data dump from the device which can be analyzed on the ship.."
"Alright then, we'll get to work on that." he said and then turned back around to the device and began trying to figure out how to download the core of the device with Sam & Penny's help.
"I think I've found an interface," Penny said. "But if the signal is that powerful, could we piggyback into it and tap into the computer that way? There's plenty of signal to work with..."
"Yes, but that could also leave out systems open to whoever made this thing. I don't like that idea. It's better to just download it to a tricorder so we can keep it isolated." he said as he looked at the interface that she had found.
"I'm going to supervise the remains," Nicole said, looking around the room once, then heading out.
"I'll go with you," Cassandra said, putting her recorder back in her bag and rushing out after Nicole.
Five Hours Later:
After successfully obtaining a data dump of information from the ancient computer system, the Captain had ordered her engineering team led by Cmdr Torres to shut off the transmission and dig into the guts of the device. Finally, with as much data as they could obtain collected, Torres had even restored the device to operational status prior to the away team departing the ancient complex for the walk back to the waiting shuttle craft for the return to the Victory. For now at least, there wasn't more to be done until the science team and engineers had a chance to use the Victory's computers to try and decipher the data this collected.
As Miguel and his engineers shut off and downloaded all the data they could from the device. Alec waited..... impatiently though he tried not to show it. He knew Rhea was like a kid in a candy store over a discovery like this. For himself however he was ready to leave this godforsaken place right now and never come back. "This is going to take months to sort through," Penny said. "Even for me. And half of it doesn't make sense."
Arashi had just arrived after going through the many shifting doors. He was just getting frustrated and then decided to take another door. "Hey everybody. What did I miss?" He said after seeing the crew.
"A headache .." the Captain drawled in response. "See if you can assist the CEO in accessing the database on this device.."
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