Going Down To The Planet Part 2 - Exploring

Posted on Sun Oct 13th, 2024 @ 8:34pm by Leiddem Kea (*) & Ka'see 'Cassie' Anderson (*) & Executive Officer Jake Ford & Delaney O'Callaghan & Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein & Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Chief Armoury Rormu Yazlin & Liha t'Ehhelih

Mission: Shackles
Location: Cotrie
Timeline: MD 01
2623 words - 5.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Cassie gazed across the dense forest as the shuttle touched down with a subtle thud in a clearing, the hiss of hydraulics signalling the shuttle depressuring that would let them out. The humid air hung heavy with the scent of moss and damp earth, a far cry from the sterile environment of SS Mary Rose which was a nice change. The woman was so used to dry air that she let out a small sneeze at the change.

She took another took a deep breath to get herself adjusted before jumping down herself, her boots sinking slightly into the moist ground. As she stood upright, her eyes swept across the landscape of a planet that was quickly becoming confusing with its missing supplies. She had no idea why she had been suggested compared to everyone else tracking down the missing supplies but there she was reporting as needed. She looked up and saw the 3 men walking towards them.

“We did not go far. Waited for you to come down just in case.” Leiddem said quietly. The forest loomed around them, the muted sounds of wildlife barely audible beneath the low hum of the shuttle. Cassie’s curiosity stilled with a growing unease. Something about the stillness felt off.

Burnie hopped out the shuttle with K-9 right beside him. He felt his boots squelch in the muddy loam and blew out a breath. "Whew. Reminds me of visiting the Everglades." A glance toward K-9 showed the robotic dog's feet had sunk a bit more than his, but not so much that it would unduly hinder movement. Probably. "You doing okay, K-9?"

The was a soft click-whir as the android scanned and processed the area. "My sensor range is considerably limited, Master, but I am otherwise only minorly impaired."

"All right," he said to Leiddem. "I guess we're as ready as we can be to try to sort this out."

With a rifle slung over one shoulder and a hand still clutching his walking stick, Owen stood for a moment to adopt a pose that resembled a man with a purpose and the information to back it up. In reality, though he cast his eyes back down the path they'd arrived from with the intent of being observant, the truth was he had been reliant on the security officer's sense of direction and was only convinced that they'd retraced their steps because they'd rendezvoused with the newcomers as intended. One tree looked much like the other and the mud already splattered all over his boots wasn't something that required much exploration to locate. Screwing up his nose, Owen shielded his eyes and took a moment to convince himself that the movement he'd caught was just a trick of the ever-present breeze.

Probably.

"Sure does feel like we're being watched," he mentioned conversationally, a man far more at home amidst the ruins of civilisation than the splendor of nature.

"Yeah..." Cassie glanced around but did not notice anything out of the ordinary on a planet that held some mysteries. "I do not like it." She added as she caught movement just outside her peripheral but when she looked to track it, there was nothing there.

"This place will do that to you," Jake noted. "Maybe something in the air. Could be biological, for all we know. I'm not an expert." He motioned for Burnie to bring K-9 forward. "Let's get this show on the road. From tracks and disturbance, we guess due east from where the supplies were originally stored."

"This better not be like the mushroom planet," Cassie whispered to herself thinking back to the pollen and how quickly things had descended into chaos for her in 2243. It haunted her to this day, that she had ended up the only one left in charge of her facilities long enough for help to arrive before she had ended up like the rest of the crew. "The air smells like... it smells like fuel. You know Deuterium."

"K-9?" Burnie queried.

The android hound lifted its head, much as a real dog might to scent the air, but it was the ears that rotated, seeking input. "I am detecting trace amounts of deuterium, as well as indications of life signs around us. However, given the biome, many and varied life forms might be expected."

The engineer nodded. Anything might be in the bush here, watching to see if they were predators or potential snacks. "Okay. The weapons cache might be the source of the deuterium, especially if anything here knocked the containers around. Wouldn't be the first time hungry critters with enough mass broke some crates open." He motioned toward the tracks Jake had indicated. "Let's head out, but keep your eyes and ears open - anything big enough to open a crate is big enough to cause us trouble, even if its an herbivore."

"Hey Burnie - the supplies Captain Jaal said were here were probably leftovers from old Romulan stocks, right? Maybe there's a metallurgic signature we can track?" Jake suggested. "An old trick a former Captain of mine said they used way back in the day."

"A good idea," Burnie agreed with a nod to Jake. "K-9, can you pick up any concentrations of refined metals?"

Servos whirred as ears swiveled like old style radar again. "It is difficult within the limited range of reliable scans in this environment, Master. Perhaps as we move closer to the site where the stores had been left?"

It took Kali rather significantly longer to join the rest of the group - after doing all the various shut down procedures, she'd stalked around the interior of the shuttle, securing whatever she could in whatever way she could beyond the usual, then circled the exterior, doing similar but lamenting the lack of time for a better camouflage job on the thing; or at least a couple hidden traps around it; because she couldn't be certain any proximity alarms or such would work right on this planet, especially one they'd gotten that distance K-9 was mentioning.

"Worth a try." Kali slid up to the rest of the group, rather more strung up with supplies than she had been on her first ride down; not just openly armed but seemingly carrying to equivalent of enough various survival gear to last a rather worrying amount of time.

"What do you think, boss?" Leiddem wondered defaulting to the security department head who he could see was quietly taking it all in around them as the group move through the forest to where the supplies were.

Yazlin had scouted out the direct vicinity when the rest of the crew had worked to unload all of their supplies for this expedition. She had her long range rifle slung over her back and simply carried a machete to be able to clear some of the way in the dense forest. "Aside from some small animal activity, there doesn't seem to be any direct threats." She chopped at an overhanging branch to clear the way for her entourage. It was odd to be the point-person for an expedition when her comfort was much more 'lay up on a hill overlooking the proceedings'. Perhaps there'd be time for that before long.

"Small animals are food for big animals," Liha remarked tersely, eyes actively scanning the brush for signs of movement. Much like Kali, she was geared up for the possibility of getting stuck down here if things went sideways (as they frequently seemed to), carrying survival gear for herself, and Burnie, since his idea of making a 'field expedient shelter' was blowing a cave into the first likely hill. But at least she could count him to be reasonably armed. Deciding he would have enough explosives for anything, she had focused on phasers and blades, and while to the outward observer she had only a Romulan style machete, a phaser rifle, and a side arm, in reality there were enough concealed weapons to arm the party twice over.

Cassie inclined her head in a she isn't wrong but they could not think on that right now when the storage containers came into view. "None of it has been fired on or anything. It looks like people simply came up and opened it and took what they needed." She commented as Leiddem indicated the foot prints that lead away. "And went that way."

"That part is serious weird, yeah." Kali sighed. "I'd expect some sorta pirates or salvage merchants who happened on it to just load the crates and leave; or pick through what they wanted and leave. Hauling them somewhere else on this planet....Either some local troupe of animals with decent dexterity hauled them off for fun; or the Rangers missed a native sapient population when they picked this planet; or someone or something else has set up here, too." She took up a spot near the back of the group and tapped the little wrist device she was wearing, marking a spot on the map she was constructing with it to find their way back later.

Upon signs of meddling Yazlin put some distance between herself and the rest of the group, trying to find a good vantage point to overlook the whole thing. She wasn't a detective or scientist, and aside from tracking someone in order to shoot them down she wouldn't be of much help at this part of the investigation. "Set a perimeter, heads on a swivel."

Owen, who had perhaps the least amount of background information of any in the group, had stood propped up by his walking stick as the others spoke. At some point, when speculation veered towards possibilities he couldn't verify, the scholar had broken tableaux to wander over to the incomplete stash, crouching down to peer into the remaining contents. If there had been mention of what was missing, he hadn't heard, possibly too engrossed in dealing with the incessant swarms of insects that found him appealing, and as he scrubbed his hand against his chin there was nothing immediately obvious in his perusal that stood out as odd other than one pretty basic query. "Why not take all of it?"

Cassie indicated Owen and his excellent point. She climbed up and into the container and nodded. "The stuff that was left makes no sense. Weapons are expensive so yeah why did they not take it all." She held up very expensive-looking equipment to make the point.

Hmm. Burnie examined the open crate and shook his head. "Depends on who, or what..." he glanced around again at the dense foliage - a city boy at heart, he couldn't help imagining that anything could be lurking in that, "...opened these."

Leiddem raised an eyebrow at Burnie and glanced at Yazlin with the same expression waiting for her to comment that she had seen more in the distance. "Certainly not animals but people standing and different shapes and sizes by the impressions." He said seeing several different foot patterns in the mud.

"Which still makes very little sense, yeah." Kali griped. "Some random local monkeys or whatever might grab random stuff; but people you would think would grab stuff they think they want. And everything from an opportunistic merchant to a pirate to a petty warlord to some idiot who landed here to make repairs would've taken the valuable stuff these mystery thieves left."

"Unless they were disturbed mid-scavenge."

With a wrinkled nose, Owen looked up and made eye contact with Cassie, his expression somewhat apologetic for arriving at a suggestion that did very little to alleviate the sensation of being scrutinised. "Or had limited means to carry anything," he added as a consolation, rising and dusting off his hands. "Probably didn't anticipate any competition."

"Limited means to carry I'd expect they'd have taken the more valuable stuff first." Kali sighed, then looked thoughtful with a nod at Owen. "Disrupted mid-way...That could definitely be though, yeah."

"So are we following the footsteps?" Cassie finally asked as people went back and forth over the situation. It was a simple question but it was not hers to answer alone.

Burnie straightened from examining the containers. "I guess we are. But we ought to secure what's here, so these weapons don't walk away too. Burying it would probably be easiest." He looked at the two (undoubtedly heavily armed) Romulans. "You guys want to use those phaser rifles to cut a hole, or should I break out some explosives?"

"Honestly the best move is probably to just load them into the shuttle, if we're worried about that." Kali shrugged. "Since we're gonna have to do that sometimes anyways to get it off the planet."

"Whatever it is you're going to decide, make it quick. We're losing daylight." There was still plenty of day left before it got dark, but dragging what remained back to the shuttle would definitely take a large chunk out of their time. Yazlin had found a small perch that gave her a good view of the site as well as what she could identify as logical approaches. With a primary focus on the route that the 'thieves' had taken to depart with some of the goods.

"Secure the site and lock it down. The rest of us can scout out and see if we can find where the rest of it went," Jake concluded finally, having let the rest of them mull over the scene. He motioned for Yazilin to take the lead on that part. "Whoever they are there's a couple of weapons missing so let's be extra careful with phasering our way through the jungle. Let's get going before it gets too dark."

Cassie glanced up as she heard a strange sound and glanced to her left as she saw a projectile hit her shoulder and then several things happened all at once. People surrounded them holding the weapons they must have taken from the storage and old-fashioned weapons, she realised she had never seen some of the species before and lastly the projectile was in her shoulder. "An arrow?" She wondered aloud as everything came into focus and everyone froze stunned.

As Jake signalled her to take up point Yazlin took her eyes off her surroundings for just a moment. It was as if they had been waiting for that moment. Two people came seemingly out of nowhere, one of whom was more tree than man, and held weapons trained on her. A quick glance told her that they weren't alone and that resisting would only result in the deaths of several of her colleagues. "Stand down!" She commanded the rest of the crew that had come to the planet. From that moment on she was observing, trying to find a moment of opportunity. It would present itself, and she had to be ready.

K-9 had leapt in front of Burnie to shield him, even as the engineer on pure Starfleet ingrained training immediately drew his weapon and crunched down. Liha similarly responded automatically by hitting the dirt, rolling behind a crate and coming up both disruptors leveled in the direction of the archer. Yazlin's yell did change her posture one iota, something Burnie noticed and contained a sigh - there was every chance that she and Kali could take out most of the attackers, with what the one whose Galae training had snapped to 'ON' might consider acceptable losses on their side, but he wasn't prepared to let come to that. "Liha," he whispered urgently, then lifted his hands, phaser rotated up in a position to he did not intend to use it, and rose slowly, looking at the odd assortment surrounding them. "I think there's been a misunderstanding here."