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Mason and Paris - Taking a Break

Posted Dec. 18, 2019, 8:39 p.m. by Commander Mason Black (Executive Officer) (David Shotton)

Posted by Commander Mason Black (Executive Officer) in Mason and Paris - Taking a Break

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Paris Carisi (Armorer/Physicist) in Mason and Paris - Taking a Break

Posted by Commander Mason Black (Executive Officer) in Mason and Paris - Taking a Break
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻

Snip

The giant beetle wandered off on the opposite direction from where they stood, and Mason let go of Paris’ legs and stood, pulling her to her feet beside him. “Okay we are out, now we just have to figure out where we are. We can’t be too far from the colony.” He had barely finished talking when a loud explosion sounded above and behind them, loud enough that the two of them could feel it as they stood and the goo they were in rippled violently. Turning around, Mason noticed now the thick black plume of smoke coming from the top of the ancient volcano, and the large flaming rocks that were now falling from the top and landing on the slopes above them with a spatter. The rumbling in the ground had grown now, and began to shake violently as sharp Earthquakes began to make it hard for the two of them to stand. “Paris!” Mason called out, grabbing her hand.

“We need to move, again. I don’t think this place likes us!” Wading through the goop, he pulled Paris with him. “This planet is supposed to be stable!” He almost yelled angrily. “The Terraforming is supposed to be a success, and there are supposed to be no active faults in this section of the crust, what the hell is going on?”

Cmdr Black, XO

Paris had a hard time keeping up with Mason for many reasons. The main one was his stride. On a normal day it was just past comfortable for her to keep up with him. With the threat of bodily harm imminent and Mason really jacked off over the failed colony cover-up, Mason’s stride was strained for him to cover more ground making Paris essentially be dragged behind him. If he hadn’t been holding her hand, he would have left her behind within a few steps. Yet Mason’s grip never lessened. Closing her fingers around his hand even tighter, Paris fought to keep up with his pace. “Mason I can’t keep up. We need to get out of this goop,” she stated the obvious.

“Don’t think about it, just run!” He barked at her and held her hand tighter. He couldn’t slow down, not with a volcano doing it’s thing close to them and earthquakes starting to become a problem.

Since she could not give up Paris did keep up until the goop thinned enough for the couple to exit to dry land.

Lt. Commander Paris Carisi.

Which was only for a moment, before a roaring whistle made Mason look up and slide to a halt. Not waiting longer than a breath, he turned and rugby tackled Paris back prone into the goop again, the both of them landing with a splat as a huge rock of steaming molten magma landed a dozen meters in front of where they had been standing, spraying superheated rock everywhere and exploding with a force that made their re-entry to the goo a soundless event.

“Stopped. Why have we stah,” Paris replied in a slightly tinny quality through her hazmat suit. Her sentence was abruptly ended by Mason coming at her like he was on the All-Blacks and she a team from Australia with the ball. The impact knocked the air from her lungs but Mason kept his hand around her waist so that her body did not take the full brunt of the impact as it went backward. The goo also acted like a safety pillow softening the impact of the hardpan under it.

Surfacing like some kind of swamp monster, Mason stood and pulled Paris to her feet once again and wiped her visor down. “Are you alright? I had to get us out of the way, look.” He turned and indicated the mountainside. All around them, was like a prehistoric apocalypse of falling molten rock, ash and fire. The ground shook constantly now as the gods seemed to stir and do battle far below them.

“Mason, can I pick the next time we try to get a weekender in,” Paris let out a small laugh knowing this wasn’t the XO’s fault.

“Baby we have to keep moving, the heat and gases won’t hurt us in these suits, but we can be squashed and burned just as easily as any of those bugs. Something is wrong here, the colony should never have been built on a fault line or near an active volcano, the colonization corporation can’t have missed it, their access tubes led right down to the underground caverns where the proof was waiting to be seen, their goons even tried to stop us snooping around. I know you are tired, but run with me, okay. I’m not leaving you here, and if we see any more fire boulders coming, we shoot them with our phasers like we did at target practice on the ship, remember?”

“God you know exactly what to say to entice a woman baby,” she flirted back slightly. If there was one good thing about their situation it was that they were at least alone and not having to act like the officers they were.

Taking her hand once more, he began to lead Paris around the side of the volcano. “We have to get back to the Colony, I have a really bad feeling that they need our help, whatever that might mean.”

Cmdr Black, XO

For the next hour, Paris and Mason made their way across the surface of the planet heading for the colony. The lava shoots were extensive, like a labyrinth moving them so far from where they started. “God how much farther is it,” Paris used Mason’s hand as leverage to help hoist herself up next to him on a rock. The hard part was done the second they crested the ridge. If the map was correct, the colony would be below them and it was a straight trip down.

Lt. Commander Paris Carisi security

“Not much further,” Mason said and put his hand around Paris’ waist as much to steady himself as her. “But this damn volcano is making everything look the same. At least the rocks have stopped falling from the sky now, and the suits stopped the gases being a problem but damn it’s hot.” It was true that the volcano seemed to have quietened down over the last hour, but that didn’t mean the danger was over. Despite how much he had tried, Mason hadn’t been able to raise the colony on his comm-badge not any ships that might have been overhead.

Climbing up and pulling himself over a ledge, Mason turned and reached back down to help Paris up. “This is it, I can see one of the towers from here.” He told her, but he hadn’t voiced his confusion that he could only see one tower, there were more in the colony of the same height.

Pulling her up beside him, he rolled to one side and pushed himself to his feet. “Oh no,” he said and reached out a hand to help Paris up, he wasn’t watching where his hand was going though as he looked down towards the colony. “Baby, we have a little problem.”

Stretched out below them was a scene of devastation that only a natural disaster could create. The colony had been built over a wide space but it had often been built upwards, Mason and Paris both knew now that the ground underneath the colony was hollow, an enormous cavern that was he home for a huge underground wildlife and geothermically active thanks to the volcano that had somehow been noted as dormant with no geological activity by the company that had colonized it.

That cavern had collapsed in many places with the result that many of the habitation towers had collapsed and sunken into the ground, the rocks being thrown from the volcano had landed amongst the buildings and many were on fire and the forms of people lying on the ground indicated that heat, gases or the rocks hadn’t been kind to the colony. Steam clouds burst from the ground in many places and Mason noted that desperately few people were trying to fight the fires or drag people away from the buildings. “It’s gone,” Mason said looking at the scene below them. “They aren’t rebuilding that, my god how the hell can they let that happen?” He looked at Paris and checked the suits oxygen levels. “We have to help, then we have to find that bastard in a suit.”

Cmdr Black, XO

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