The Waiting Game

Posted on Thu Jan 16th, 2020 @ 10:29am by Commodore Samantha York & Commander Hans Munich & Lieutenant Commander Damion Wolfe & Major John Kayhill & Lieutenant Aenar Torek

1,175 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Food for the Gods
Location: Calypso

ON

They had two hours to keep searching the planet for anything that would stand out, for dead spots, unusual readings, or anything that looked out of hte ordinary. Unfortunately, the entire city looked out of the ordinary. Nothing could be scanned in it due to some sort of natural barrier. All they got was static. Sam hoped it had something to do with the malfunctioning machine, but whatever it was kept them from finding Shan and Ronnie.

Sam had yet to inform Shan's mate. So, she tapped her combadge and called him to her Ready Room.

Savar; the Diplomatic Chief made his way up the Ready Room and rang the chime then entered once bidden.

"Commodore, Lt Savar; chief Diplomat." The Hybrid Romulan who favored more of his Vulcan side introduced himself. "You sent for me."

"I'll get to the point," Sam said, standing to come around her desk. "We've lost two members of the away team. They got separated by a group of townspeople. Commander Munich has searched the area, and we've searched for them from the ship, with no luck. One of the two is Lei Shan."

Savar showed no emotion; the Vulcan in him would not allow him to break, he returned a stoic expression. "Will my skills at diplomacy be of use ma'am." He asked calmly. "SHe is alive, I have not sensed her death. It is a Vulcan trait, those we are bonded to we feel theire presence and are aware of their loss." He explained. "I am at your desposal to help with any operation to aid in her return, I assure you upon my word as an Officer, I am quite able to be objective so long as Lei is alive." He almost cursed himself inwardly. "Where there is life there is hope." He gave a slight bow. "I am at your service Commodore."

"I don't know yet. I don't know what happened. But as this is a pre-warp culture, we have to proceed with care. Wherever they are, we cannot scan them with the ship's sensors."

Damion stood at the Tactical Station, his mind not focused on his work, while his gaze was facing the console itself. He didn't like waiting, even more so with Ronnie being involved. He closed his eyes and clenched his fist, trying not to think of all the possible outcomes. He hated waiting. He hated not knowing. He hated standing around doing nothing.

[Marine Barracks]

The S&R team John had ordered put together was ready. Given imagery the away team had sent back, they had managed to create some garb that they could pass for raiders in. John had his own gear packed and ready. If there was a Marine deployment, he would be going. After having taken time to study the terrain data with the team, there was nothing that could be done but to wait to see if the team was called up. John hated waiting, so he went to his office and started reading reports and doing light paperwork, as if it were any other time.

[Bridge]

Aenar sighed with frustration. Since coming up to speed with the situation, he had been trying to scan the surface for signs of the Calypso's missing crew. So far nothing had worked - there was simply too much interference from the malfunctioning machine on the surface.

He adjusted the sensors once more, trying to compensate. Nothing. 'Time's running out ...' he muttered to no one in particular.

"While you're watching for signs of our missing crew," Sam said, "Get as much as you can on the city and its people. Perhaps if we learn more, we'll find out why our people are missing and where they are."

'Aye, Captain,' responded Aenar with enthusiasm. He let the the Main Computer handle the task of trying to breach the malfunctioning machine's noise - it was much quicker than him anyhow - and set up a secondary sweep of the surrounding city.

As the sensors began feeding him their tenuous telemetry, Aenar apologetically elbowed one of his junior officers away from the second Science console, projecting the image the ship was producing on its screen. Periodically he would check the status of the automated scan. Seeing it provide a few more sparse details, he merged the two images the ship was producing.

The city, at least the parts closest to the pyramid, was built on a grid layout, much like the Earth city of Washington, D.C. or parts of New York. The Bajoran threw a glance in the direction of the main viewer and saw it was looking at starlight. He uhmed and ahhed silently as the computer built up the composite image. Occasionally he glanced at the chronometer.

Once he was happy that the primary and secondary sweeps were picking up as much data as the interference allowed, he set to work calibrating a third set of sensor sweeps aimed specifically at picking up the population of the planet. Aenar sat silently for a few moments as the computer built up a third dataset for him.

He worried slightly he was taking up too much of the sensor's bandwidth, interfering with the duties of other members of the crew. But time was of the essence.

Sam tried to keep her eye on everything, from the data in front of her to the viewscreen to the location of the away team, so that if any of the remaining members disappeared, she would know. That was problematic at best with the pyramid and the surrounding area being a dead zone and the rest of the city had some sort of interference. She trusted her people, but she also felt protective.

Her combadge chirped with a brief message from Jayna on the planet. She listened to the message. "Thank you. Keep me updated. York out."

Sam turned to Damion while addressing the bridge at large. "The away team has entered the pyramid. The machine appears to be inside." She paused. "They also saw our two missing crew, but there were too many people around to do anything. They were sent into the pyramid along with a large number of baskets of food and supplies."

Aenar nodded, 'yeah, we lost the crew's signal when they entered - I can't determine whether it's interference from the machine or not. The Pyramid seems to have a dampening effect all of its own, sensors aren't penetrating.'

"Interesting," Sam said. It made sense, and at the same time, she was curious to find out why the need to have a dampening field.

"Keep monitoring and let me know if you find anything unusual," she said to the science officer.

'Aye Captain,' Aenar turned happily to his work, busying himself in the sensor sweeps once more.

____
OFF

Commodore Samantha York
Commanding Officer

LieutenantSavar
Diplomat

Lieutenant Commander Damion Wolfe
Chief Security Officer

Captain John Kayhill
Marine CO

Lieutenant Aenar Torek
Chief Science Officer


Lieutenant Aenar Torek
Chief Science Officer

 

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