STF

Main Sim - Wolf 359 Planet 2 - Surface Return

Posted April 12, 2023, 9:24 a.m. by Vice Admiral CockRoach (GM) (Robert Archer)

[snip]

[O] Well it’s just speculation at this time Captain. But we did notice a dampening effect on our scanners while we were in the caves. The effective range was pretty dramatically reduced. This could definitely be impacting the ship’s sensors as well. Ground penetrating scans are only so effective, add in something diffracting the scanners, and then add in that we weren’t surveying for life signs. It’s quite possible that we didn’t even see any of the life sign readings, or the computer automatically categorized them as small animals, because the signature had been so greatly decreased. I would need to do a deeper analysis of the original scan data to be sure Captian. [C]

Cmdr. Grace - XO/CSO

El thought that given the surface scans of the area with the various rock layers, their thickness, and their angle or pitch or whatever geology term one used for that sort of thing, that they would be able to extrapolate the rock strata at least roughly. It would give a better idea for surveyors who would be coming next to take core samples and much better map the area geologically. Their scans could give them an indication of what was there. Further work would tell what it looked like under the ground. That was beyond a mere engineer unless El was working on the machinery taking the samples. One didn’t worry about a dampening field when one was taking physical samples out of the ground.

The mention again of natives to the planet was exciting. Apart from ‘seeing’ a Vulcan from afar she had never met an ‘alien’. Sure the sounded primitive but it was new. What were they like? But more importantly to El, what mattered was who they were as a people and would we from Earth be able to coexist with them both peacefully and equitably. Had humanity changed from mere centuries ago where those lesser humans were exploited upon contact? El had her doubts. One of her mentors had said to her that ‘Civilization as we know it is a very thin veneer. Peel it back and you will find chaos and anarchy. Mankind thinks it has grown but we will never outgrow our character. Be mindful of pride, Elemirre.’ This will be a very interesting test for humanity, El thought, for herself as well.

  • El, Eng

As the group was speaking a pair of double beeps drew everyone’s attention to one of the setup scanner consoles nearby. Heading over NE Cullins spoke, “..Seems like survey probe 9 just went dark. It was burrowing down to about 300ft below the surface 200 yards north of here passing through some veins of iron, and lead veins laced with traces of gold and diamonds when it just went dark at the 336ft mark.” He said.

GM CockRoach

Baumann looked at Cullins and said “What was the last reading sent?”

Baumann, MACO CO

”..Not much given the probes limitation, ma’am. It showed hitting 336ft deep, and had just taken on a sample of diamond and gold traces for analysis when 2 seconds later it went dark..” Cullins said.

GM CockRoach

Heather moved over and looked at readings on the console over NE Cullins shoulder. “Definitely possible that we just lost signal. Between the signal degradation we saw down in the caverns, the lead could be further insulating the signal, or some other combination of the ores.”

Heather stood up and just looked at the data for a second.

“What is the probe programmed to do if it loses signal? Is it set to continue its mission, or does it have a come home command in case of signal loss?”

Cmdr. Grace - XO/CSO

”..No in this case someone is going to have to go to the survey line and pull it up manually. Looking at the last few seconds I would suspect something either killed its power cell or damaged the probe or the cell. So we’ll have to pull up the line and probe back up here to get more information..” he said.

GM CockRoach


Posts on SS Sojourner

In topic

Posted since


© 1991-2024 STF. Terms of Service

Version 1.15.9