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Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site

Posted July 4, 2022, 5:08 p.m. by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) (Gene Gibbs)

Posted by Lieutenant Naomi Locke (Science Officer) in Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site

Posted by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) in Main Sim - Mystery Planet - Columbia Landing Site
[snip]

Rick took over, “..We had lost contact with ground control, and any other navigational aides. So we went manual, none of the ground mass made sense but we eventually were able to make a more or less controlled landing on this massive plateau that you see now. For the first hours we figured it was just some area of like Arizona or Texas. But the arrival of Spikers and such soon convinced us otherwise..” he said again pointing to a 20 or so of the massive flying insects overhead. “..We soon realized we weren’t in Kansas anymore to borrow an old phrase. Eventually we rigged up that water wheel you see, jury rigged the radio to send out a broadcast every hour or so, and settled in to wait. As days became weeks became months and years, we eventually gave up on ever being rescued and settled in to just live out our lives here.” he said.

“That was some flying to come down in that onto no runway. Didn’t they call the shuttles a ‘flying brick’?” Great, now she sounded like some kind of museum tour guide interpreter. Then she caught herself. No! Their shuttle crew were dead. The mission failed. Remember that, El! No matter how real these people were this was impossible!

”..Well that’s one way to describe the orbiter I guess..” Rick said in reply to El with a chuckle.

El refrained to say ‘that’s what the history books said’ …

Naomi was curious as she listened to the group’s conversation. She frowned at the data frowned and immediately considered the reasons for this. There wasn’t many even with the ever growing lifespan of humans over the eons. This sparked her curiosity enough to speak up.

“How many of you are there?” The question was expected from an someone with a thirst for knowledge.

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

”..Just the seven of us. We have explored much of the local region here. But no other signs of intelligent life ever came up on this planet..” Kalpana said.

The obvious answer would be seven, shy of children. Two women. Five guys at last from the bit that she had caught. A hundred fifty years. How did ‘that’ work? No quarrels. The implication in what this ‘Rick’ said was that the others were back there. The seven. No children? Why was it these two who came? After a century and a half there would be the potential of many children. But if they didn’t age, what of them? Were there any? More impossible things. El glanced up at the surrounding buzzing insects and thought of the animals, these ‘spikers’. Were they similarly affected in some way? Would they be? Pros. Cons.

As if also sensing the unasked or implied question, Kalpana went on, “..Before you ask no there are no children from us. We um....well tried but whatever thing allows us to remain as old as we were when we got here, also meant we couldn’t have children..” she said

Or whatever they went through to get here rendered them incapable, El thought, but that was more of a doctor or science thing.

El was excited about being on this now second new world, breathing new air, seeing new .. critters. She glanced back to the shuttle. She and Aelef had been brought down to work, what, engineering things? That won’t fly again. Even if they manage to work in her machine shop for parts. There was no runway. They would need to put the shuttle on the Bonnie and launch her from that. But she was too far gone in age and damages. She glanced back to the two. And a century and a half away from any flight training. What use would ‘they’ be here, her and Aelef, at this point? Still, being here was exciting - but for the impossibility of it all. How was this possible?

  • El, Eng

Ari listened to the couple and shook her head. “We sincerely appreciate the offer of refreshment, but it’s probably better if we didn’t. At least until we figure out a few things.” She laughed lightly to keep the conversation easy.

Rick seeming happy for the change of topic nodded, “..As you wish..” he said.

Just then, something dawned on her. “I know this seems like a silly question, but humor me, please.” She paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Just how long have you guys been here? I apologize for all the questions, but I hope you understand our curiosity.” She smiled again hoping she didn’t sound pushy.

She had asked because when one of them had asked how many of their group there were, it occurred to her that in over a century, there should have been a flock of folks. Perhaps there were and they just hadn’t seen them, yet. But if there wasn’t… Then time was the next curiosity factor. If they felt it had only been a few years or a decade, even, then they had a bigger problem. And a bigger one, beyond that, was … If their longevity was tied to the planet… what would happen if they left its surface?

Ari CO

”..Roughly speaking? About 148 or so years? We figured out that this planet has about the same length of 24 hour period of day/night that Earth does. Its trip around the system here is slightly longer though about 370 days locally..” he said.

Kalpana then decided to ask probably the question most burning on her mind, “..Um…so how is Earth?” she inquired.

GM CockRoach

To have a near Earth like that. That again seemed impossible. Well, sure, she hadn’t been to many worlds at all, well, okay two, but to have a near Earth thing like this? What were the odds? A Vulcan would figure that one, she thought.

Just as this question got asked, there was a slowly growing rubble in the air above them followed by a distant sonic boom crack. The swarm of 20 some spikers overhead flew off as through the cloud cover the Bonaventure made a obviously controlled descent from orbit to hold in a moving circular pattern about 40,000ft up. Why this had been done by the XO was anyone’s guess, since well he had not the foresight to tell the CO and company why he was doing it or warn them. The swarm of 20 spikers after recovering some distance away it seems just got ticked about this new much larger ‘intruder’ into their air space, and so began to swarm around the ship and land in places on the hull using their spikey tails to ‘attack’ the ship. Of course they couldn’t really do any damage to the ship right?

Kalpanna and Rick seemed stunned by this sudden appearance. “..Holy mother of God!” Rick said, “..is that your space ship?!?” Rick and Kalpanna then said in awe.

GM CockRoach

“Well that was dramatic,” El said dryly in the direction of Aelef, but others could likely hear. She looked up and felt a bit of pride in it, in what she saw. The bugs disappeared then seemed to not like the ship and moved up to .. say hi? What more could they do? “That,” she said, “is the Bonaventure. Our ship. Launched from spacedock from Earth.” She glanced to Aelef who was looking at her and shrugged a ‘what are they doing’? She shrugged back and looked back up, shielding her eyes with a hand as she gazed at it from the underside. That’s miles up still. Did they lose contact with them and had to come down?

Rick gave a faint whistle in surprise taking in the size of the ship, then glanced to the grounded orbiter. “..I guess technology has sure come a long way since we flew..” he commented before looking back up to the Bonaventure.

“Built on the foundations and stepping stones that you contributed to,” El replied. “Advances came but they couldn’t have come without your part.” There, she sounded like an interpreter at a museum .. and that she was legitimizing these impossible people. She was having trouble with this and keeping it and them in perspective.

Naomi digested her thoughts over the answer. Whatever phenomenon had occurred, it affected more than their age. Her lips curled into a thoughtful frown as she considered the possible causes. The sounds of the ship lowing in low caught her attention. Her eyes jerked skyward in time to see the Spike swarm ascendant to meet it.

“Yes, it is. And now it has gotten some unwanted attention.” Thinking fast through her anxiety, Naomi turned to the others.

“I’m not sure what the XO is thinking, but I don’t think having a swarm of bugs on the ship is good. Does anyone have any idea how much beating the hull can take before it ruptures?” She suspected they had little time before the ship crashed down into the planet.

“Or how we can get them off without putting ourselves at risk?”

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

Rick spoke, “..Early on Spikers tried attacking us and we sheltered in Columbia. Except for the glass after repeated hits they could not pierce the hull..” He said.

Knowing this El could know that likely the hull plating was then impenetrable to the Spikers no matter how much they went at it. The port holes on the Bonaventure made of far stronger composite clear glass then Columbia had was probably also impenetrable or else would require significantly more effort on the part of the Spikers to break. Even then if the Bonnie just polarized the hull plating then that alone would keep the Spikers from breaking through. Conversely a reverse electrical charge pulse through the ship’s plating would also serve likely to either scare off or if set high enough fry the large insects. So in short the Bonnie was quite safe, they could literally just raise the polarization system and would be invulnerable and do nothing else.

El looked over to Aelef. “Get in touch with the ship. What are they doing? And let them know they’ve attracted some local bugs.” He nodded and moved closer to the grounded shuttle, hearing what the survivors said. “I can’t see damage being done,” El said, turning into engineer mode. “Lots they could do up there. Polarize the hull, send an electrical pulse through it, even going back up into space would shake them off.” She didn’t say that polarizing would likely zap them like mosquitoes. Who was up there on the bridge? Probably Lt Green. He would go by the book, if they noticed them at all.

Isaac was looking around not a lot damage to the inside of the vessel. He was hoping to find the black box. According to the blueprints he found it should be in the area he was looking.

Lt. Isaac Black (AC)

Meanwhile inside the orbiter, Isaac would locate both the operations module recorder and OEX MADS recorder near both the lower cockpit and rear lab module respectively. Both seemed intact though no power was given to them anymore by the orbiters systems. Since all that rewiring had been focused and used to build the water generator outside as well as keep the radio and such powered and functioned over the last nearly 150 years. In short the two boxes would need an interface to be accessed by their scanners or the like and a power source.

Thankfully if Black got a little help they could easily do so in the shuttle pod that brought them here. It would take a bit of work but was more then doable unless any problems were happening inside either box from age and the like.

GM CockRoach

Aelef, meanwhile, moved to the shadow of the shuttle and took out his communicator. [o] Engineer Aelef to Bonaventure. We see you up there. That was . . quite an entrance. We’re wondering if anything is wrong? Are your comms not going through to us? [c] He didn’t add that the Captain would want to know, but that was better hinted than said in error. [o] You also have some bugs heading your way but Ensign Serinde doesn’t think they can do any harm. We’ve met two of the .. shuttle crew. They confirm they’ve been there for a century and a half but say they don’t know how. [c]

El & Aelef, Eng

Black packed up both boxes and put them in his backpack he pulled out his communicator =^= El are you at the shuttle I’m gonna need your help =^= he said as he started his way to the shuttle.

Lt. Isaac Black (AC)

Her comms went off. Isaac. He could have just come over. They weren’t that far away. Which shuttle? The old one or their pod? She hid a frown, poorly, and motioned to Aelef to see what Isaac wanted. If she drifted it would be the Captain, a couple of the stray MACO’s and not much more there and she wanted to hear what was up.

“Okay.” Naomi stated, her fear lingered for a moment.

She started to feel like she overreacted and the awareness washed over her. Her anxiety spiked before she pushed it down. No point in worrying on something she couldn’t control. Her eyes spotted Engineering pull the flight recorder out of the ship. While they were busy with that, she might as well take samples of the ship’s hull.

Approaching the hull, she scrapped off material from the surface. She inserted the slid into her device. Bring up the files from 2003, she compared the components to the present day sample.

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

Running it through the sample recorder on the scanner, the device beeped showing it would take a few minutes to fully process.....

Naomi sighed when she noted the samples will take some time. Her attention drifted to see Black and Aelef investigating the ship’s black box. Not having much engineering knowledge unlike Aelef, she let the pair handle that on their own.

People started drifting away and El was there not far from the Captain. She had this urge to chew on a nail. So summarize in her mind with these impossible people. She had to shake the urge to think they were alive when they were dead, at least in her history book. It would not likely be a good thing to blurt that part out. Something here was keeping them alive but preventing them from having kids. Moreover they survived a century and a half without anyone dying. This was so science fiction it was almost a cliché.

What else could they say or ask? You’re supposed to be dead. The foam insulation that caused a heat shield crack was what caused it to break up with everyone perishing? That that was what happened here in her world? That their instrumentation could not possibly show anything viable for them to suggest a cause? Or that they were light years away from where they were supposed to be even if they lived through it, which they didn’t? Or that they should be dead anyway from old age? She noticed Naomi taking samples from the ship. She did a quick text over to her.

[o] What about air or water samples? [c] That too was cliché. It’s in the water!

But what about now? It was probably right to not get them off the world in the event that something bad would happen, like, say, people that should be dead might die? That was a pretty huge elephant in the room right now and El was having trouble seeing around it.

“Must be a problem at birthdays with all those candles,” she said, then thought, stick with what you know. “Earth is slowly becoming more united. We broke the speed of light barrier decades ago and that paved the way to .. what you see above us. The Bonnie is one of the first steps out into space exploration that gets us past our galactic doorstep.”

Rick seemed dumb founded, at this news, though seemed happy somewhat that Earth was still in good shape. Kalanna seemed equally relieved.

Meanwhile Aelef met up with Isaac. “What have you got?” he asked

El & Aelef

Isaac pulled the Black box from the bag he brought “ let’s check their story Shell we” holding up the black box “ frankly I have more questions than answers” he said handing to to her “ do you think you can get it to work”

Lt. Isaac Black (AC)

Aelef, or PO Clark, looked at the box. “Old data recorder?” he asked, reaching out to take it. Hefting it he turned it over and around in his hands. Stopping at a connection he brought it closer to get a better look. “Old. Don’t see any wireless adaptation.” Tapping the plug in regions he ran a thick fingertip around one. “Gonna need to hardwire this.” Looking in the shuttle pod he thought. “Might be able to MacGuyver something to connect to the scanner here.” Squatting down he handled it again. “Can you grab the tool kit from the back? There might be something there for cabling I can work with, and maybe a cable from the old shuttle there with an end.”

Ari had been listening, but turned her back to step away a bit and observe where they were.

Just then everything happened at once. The Bonnie appeared in the atmosphere above them, and the spikers arose then headed for the ship. Just as she turned to give orders, a smile lit her face. The crew had already done what they were trained for. Messages went back n forth about the found boxes, and communication with the ship was initiated.

As they were talking their was a rustle from the woods nearby and 5 more figures dressed a lot like Rick and Kalanna came out, another woman and 4 more men. On the far right of the group one man probably in his early 40s, with blonde short hair, shouted, not seeming to notice the shuttle pod or landing party. “..Holy crap Rick! I think we got aliens visiting us!!!” The man said pointing up.

The second woman in the bunch, further to the left in the clearing and covered in what seemed a lot of dirt from doing something a bit ago before running here, she was probably also in her late 30s or early 40s, “..Uh, I don’t think they are aliens William…” she said skidding to a halt in surprise seeing the landing party.

The man called William broke his gaze from the Bonaventure and looked to the landing party wide eyed. “..Holy crap!” he declared.

That seemed to be the cultural expletive. El glanced up again at the ship and the dots of the ‘bugs’ around it. Did they think it was ‘mother’? She breathed out her own little expletive in Chinese with the new people arriving. On the one hand she was intrigued. On the other her ‘romantic’ side came out in seeing them as a kind of modern (?) day Robinson Caruso story. That is, if they weren’t all dead from breaking up in the atmosphere on re-entry.

“They’re out there, though,” she said. In for a penny, in for a pound as she had learned with her time in the Academy in England. “We are meeting other peoples. All those things that SETI was looking for and what Sagan was sure of was true. We have .. neighbors.” Not that they were the friendliest and the most friendly were neutral at best and speculative at worst, El thought, relating to the Vulcans.

A darker skinned man with black hair proably also in his early 40s came up to Rick, “..Jesus, Rick, are they really human?” he said in a half whisper, cautiously looking at the two armed MACOs who held their phase rifles down but at the ready for use if needed. “..Looks like they mean business..” he muttered

Additional people had arrived, interacting with the CO. At the mention at being human, Naomi let out a snicker.

“I was human last time I checked.” Her voice held a tone of amusement even if no one heard her comment.

Another white man with slightly greying hair probably in his late 40s came up, “..Unless English is a universal language for ETs William,” he said indicating the letters and numbers on the Bonaventure’s hull, “..they sure look human enough to me..” he then grinned a bit, sticking out his hand to the MACO sergeant, “Hey solider! Names David Brown, where you from?” he asked.

The NE Sargent shifted his rifle to one hand and shook David’s hand, “..Names Sargent Rickmoore, was born on Earth in Peru..” he said. Meanwhile the rest of the now 7 former shuttle crew had gathered around near the landing party.

Stepping back to their hosts, she smiled a bit broader and shook her head. “This wasn’t exactly how I imagined we’d introduce you to the future you missed out on. There’s plenty to tell you, and show you. But we have a few things to take care of first.”

The Captain sighed and then took a deep breath before continuing. “Once we figure out why my XO decided to drop in for a peek-a-boo look see, we’ll start figuring out a way to get you home. My biggest concern is the question of if we can take you home. If it’s the water, atmosphere, or something tied to the planet, it could be fatal if we remove you. I’d like my science team to check a few things first, then we’ll take a volunteer to our ship and see if removing you from here is detrimental.”

Meanwhile, El’s head snapped over to the Captain. ‘Home’?! They’re dead! What home? We don’t know where they even came from but it wasn’t ‘her’ Earth. Another thought caught her. If this was another Earth they came from and other universe of sorts – another impossible thing! Then maybe … maybe their longevity was from their being here in this one and nothing to do with the food or water or air or droppings from the razor back bugs.

She closed the gap and touched the man’s arm lightly. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to take you guys home. You deserve it more than anyone I’ve met. But I won’t risk your lives, unnecessarily, to do it.” She dropped her arm.

“But in the meantime, we’ll help with food, water and anything else you need. And we’d like to meet the rest of your team.”

She kept half an eye on Aelef waiting to hear the Bonnie’s response.

Ari CO

El&Aelef

GM CockRoach

El, Eng

Returning to her earlier task, Naomi began to farther investigate the ship’s exterior. She collected more samples of plant life surrounding or covering the vessel to add to the data base. It didn’t hurt and the more things they eliminated, the closer they were to solving this mystery.

Naomi paused long enough to comment to the CO.

“Captain, I need to take scans and samples of their water and food supply. We also need some blood samples to rule out viral or bacterial influences. At this point, we have too many variables that could be causing this.”

-ENS Naomi D. Locke, Sci

OOC: Rob .. for the record (aka my scribbled and occasionally legible notes) .. what is the current year the Bonnie is sailing in this sim? Trying to get ages settled and such for El and my engineering dirty dozen. :) .. gene
IC:

With some effort Aelef managed, with Isaac, to find the connection where the black box had been removed, and with some care, to extract a length of the cable itself. The important part was the connector plug that would go into the black box and another for power. He’d need to supply power to it and MacGuyver the other end of the data cable to fit with his equipment. While he worked, he glanced over at the ‘squad’ of the ancient astronauts. Living legends. As El said, impossible, but it was still exciting.

“Isaac, tell me about yourself. What got you into being a soldier, and why on the Bonaventure and not a posting on Earth. Still lots to do there,” he asked, resting himself on the edge of the open hatch to their own shuttle pod. Bringing up one end of the wire he squinted and then said. “Say, can you hand me the wire trimmers? Next to the micro-solder there.”
- CPO Aelef Clark


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