More Questions (part 1)
Posted on Tue Jan 7th, 2014 @ 4:36pm by Commodore Samantha York & Master Chief Petty Officer Apu Barnum & 1st Lieutenant Kara Melo & Lieutenant Eamon Lynx & Commander Hans Munich & Captain Cameron Bourne & Warrant Officer Sterling Kamala IV & Gaia
1,110 words; about a 6 minute read
Mission: Tabula Rasa
ON
Samantha slipped into the darkness, her hands in front of her to keep from bumping into anything. When the space opened, she stepped to the side and waited for her eyes to adjust.
She didn't have to wait long. After two minutes, the lights came on, revealing a large ante chamber with a desk, chair and wardrobe.
Four beds lined one wall. These were not the mats she and the others had used. These were of some sort of metal with a mattress and blankets that were turning to dust.
Chenoa stepped up to one of the beds and sneezed after she touched one of them. The woman then walked around and pulled open the wardrobe to peer inside it.
The wardrobe was filled with what used to be uniforms. Not the standard work uniform they all wore, but what appeared to be a black jumpsuit with pockets. But when they were touched, parts of them fell off.
Walking in, Cam made his way to the middle of the room and looked around, surveying the area.
"Okay, there's got to be another door in here," Sam said. "All those traps can't be for a bedroom."
She began to look around carefully, felling the walls that weren't blocked by beds. Then she sat at the desk and began to feel around.
Inside a drawer she found a tiny indentation. When she pushed it, there was a click in the wall.
Hearing the click, Cam turned to look at Sam, "Well, sounds like you found something. I wonder why they'd need a secret compartment"
"The best way to figure that out," said Sterling who had entered quietly, "Is to go in and check it out."
Hans entered the room and began looking about, there was something that he felt in his gut. A room with bunks... lockers and when he came in there was a click. He moved across from the desk to a blank wall, the center would be the best place to look for the recessed door.
"Keep the button pressed." Hans said out of what had to be instinct. "If they wanted this secure then it would be a two person job to assure no 'one' breaks in and gain access?"
"Okay," Sam said. "Keeping the button pressed."
Chenoa closed the doors and waited for the 'men' to do all the work. It wasn't as if she didn't have any of those skills. She knew she did, but she wasn't part of the special elite crew. She was something else. Her mind worked on that puzzle as well and she sighed softly and wandered outside her thoughts on her sister. She spied something on the ground it didn't look like anything else that they had seen. She walked up to it and squatted down and studied it for a long time, lost in thought she worked slowly and deliberately.
Kara walked around, looking at the equipment in the second room. There was an odd machine that caught her attention. "Cam, over here," she called, walking over to the device.
It sat on a table with a chair nearby. It had a rounded metal groove in the table that led to a small opening in the machine. It was big enough to fit a large man's arm. "What do you make of it?"
Eamon arrived holding a few tools from whatever he could get his hands on. It seemed he was good at adapting things to suit his needs. One of them was a sharp pick and he saw the groove, with a smile he placed a hand on Cam and then Kara. "You two might wanna to stand back." He said and got into a position where he could use the pick to hammer above the groove to make it bigger.
"Hang on mate. Are you sure that's the best thing to do?" Cam asked, staying where he was, "Why not just shove a bar or something in that gap and try to jimmy it open?"
"How do you know that will work?" Eamon asked. "The groove is really small, we need to make it bigger."
"How do you know trying to make it bigger will work?" Kara asked. "We don't even know what it does yet."
Sam decided it would be a good idea to step in and find out what was going on. "I agree with Kara. Let's find out what it is and what it does, then if we need to enlarge it, we'll let Eamon have a go."
"How do you plan to find out what it is and what it does unless you use it?" Eamon asked putting the pick back on his belt.
'Perhaps," said Sterling "We start by carefully examining it. Using our eyes and hands. We just need to figure it out. Brain over brawn usually works best."
"Maybe it's like the other door. There could be a button or a switch around here somewhere."
Munich knew that the typical 'switch was along the wall close to a doorway. He started to feel along he walls next to the doorway for any slight variation in the...plates. A slightest indentation gave it away.
"Open Sesame." He said as a joke he laughed at for an unknown reason.
"What's a sesame?" Maria asked. She'd come in behind the rest of them and stood in the doorway, watching.
"Block that door, please," Sam asked Maria. "I don't thin we want to be stuck in here."
Maria felt around the inner door and found nothing. Then she looked around and found a flat piece of metal that would block the doorway enough to keep it from closing.
Apu walked in carrying the still-unconscious Anastasia and her plant. He set the plant on a table and lay the woman carefully on one of the cots to sleep off whatever was in the dart.
"I think it is a seed of some kind from Earth used in many foods." Eamon stated looking at Maria, then he faced Sterling. "Now there's only so much you can understand until you actually do something to find out."
Eamon went to the wall that the groove was part of and began feeling around. He got to just a metre from the chair and one of his fingers pressed an indent that began making the room shake slightly as the groove grew.
(To be continued...)
Commodore Samantha York
Commanding Officer
Chenoa
Crew member
1st Lieutenant Cameron Bourne
Marine CO
Warrant Officer Sterling Kamala IV
Security Investigations
Lieutenant Hans Munich
Chief Operations Officer
Staff Sergeant Kara Melo
Alpha Platoon Leader
Lieutenant Eamon Lynx
Chief Engineer
Chief Warrant Officer Apu Barnum
Quartermaster
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