Tiberius IV: Scanning Through the Sand

Posted on Thu Apr 15th, 2010 @ 3:09am by Commodore Samantha York & Colonel Damon Raine

503 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: What Lies Beneath?
Location: Tiberious IV
Timeline: Current

ON

Sam spent quite a while working on the scanners, tweaking them, testing them, tweaking them again, to see if she could get something beneath the surface.

Finally, she was able to get shadows and shapes, much like the early Terran sonograms. She set the computer to scan sand beneath them in a 200-meter area and went to find Damon.

The Marine Captain was starting to get frustrated with the comm systems, his fingers drummed heavily on the table in front of him as he strained his eyes to look over the data stream.

"Pull up that last read-out again." He said to the Marine controlling the comm system.

The Marine obediently scrolled up to the last page of information.

Damon read it over again before letting out a long sigh and leaning back into his chair. "Nothing. Go forward again." He brought his hands up and rubbed at his sore eyes.

Sam stood watching the two for a moment before interrupting. "I think I figured it out. Do you have a minute, Damon?"

"Yeah, sure." He said, thankful for the interruption and promise of answers.

He pushed his chair out and walked over to where Samantha was standing. As he moved he stretched his limbs and was surprised by how stiff they had become over the last few hours.

"How are you feeling?" He asked quietly as he approached her.

"Relieved to be able to breathe again," she replied softly. "Come here. I found a way to scan through the sand."

She led him over to her computer. "Traditional methods of scanning failed, but I found something that works, more or less. It's an old Earth way of looking inside people. They called it ultrasound. By bouncing the right frequency of sound waves off an object you could get a rough image of what is underneath the surface. Look." She turned it on and a crude image of the cliff and sand took shape. By looking very closely, they could see the rock outcropping and the firefly. They could also see the clear outline of what had to be two ships. A moment later, a long, snake-like object could be seen moving through the sand...

Damon's eyes went wide at the sight of the creature. "Well then...that isn't good."

"That all depends on whether the thing is hostile or not," Sam said, watching the console as well.

Damon nodded at the words before turning back to the image. The creature moved surprisingly quickly through the earth as if unencumbered by the weight and density of it. What piqued Damon's interest was that its movements seemingly had no pattern at all. "What do you think it's doing?"

"I don't know. It seems to be reacting to the sound waves, though."

"Possibly." He commented. "I'm more concerned about how it will be reacting to our people."

Sam looked at him and shook her head. "I don't know."


END

Commander Samantha York
Commanding Officer
USS Orion

Marine Captain Damon Raine
Marine CO
USS Orion

 

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