Rock Bottom

Posted on Wed Jul 17th, 2019 @ 4:23pm by Fleet Admiral Donatella Figueroa & Lieutenant Junior Grade Shras th'Zarath & Lieutenant Aeryn Vinia & Lieutenant Kylian Linwood

Mission: S01E04 The Outpost Has Eyes
Location: Shuttlecraft Dewa | Asteroid

The Class F shuttlecraft Dewa was a newer made shuttle of the old long standing Class F design. Though the words luxury and spacious were not quite fitting adjectives for the interior of the shuttle, it was sort of the modern day equivalent to old Earth minivans. It fit a one pilot and up to six passengers comfortable with plenty of legroom and cabin space. There was room for the bare essentials in the event of a crash landing or being stranded for several days, but Captain Figueroa and her team were not planning on spending longer than they needed to on the Asteroid.

In fact, the Asteroid was not too far from Boradis III nor the USS Musashi's present location. They were out of transporter range and tractor range, but communications range was doable with the launching of a communications buoy to enhance communications, but the metallic composition of the asteroid made communications static and choppy. Fig opted to just make this a quick investigation and do their best to stay in contact with the Musashi if and when needed. She and her team were in their environmental suits.

Given her years of experience as a starship navigator, Captain Figueroa herself was in the pilot's seat of the shuttle. So far things had been somewhat smooth if not a bit rocky along the way with some turbulence and the Dewa would need a fresh coat of paint. There was an immense drain on deflector power which was browning out every so often. A fragment of the asteroid would ding the shuttlecraft's shielding but shields were holding... for the most part. There had been a moment or two she needed to recalibrate shielding and reroute power. A fragment or few may have hit the hull. "Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain thanking you for flying with me today. The skies are dark, there is no atmosphere to look forward to, and please remember to use your tricorders before you touch anything. This is space and we are landing shortly on an alien asteroid. The smallest of dust or rock could be a lifeform. Please do not under any circumstances remove your helmets," she said as she prepared for landing.

Lieutenant JG Kylian Linwood was nervous. It wasn't that he'd never been on an away mission, he'd just never been on one that required any sort of environmental suit. Of course, he'd logged his time in simulations, but it had never been real life. He had checked and double checked his suit, just in case. "Right... no removing my helmet," he repeated.

Aeryn chuckled softly, probably the only one amused by the situation. She came from a planet that was agricultural and she was personally just as comfortable in the dark as the light.

"Shras, make sure those phasers are fully charged. I don't want to run into any trouble and only be able to get one shot off," she said being extra cautious. As boring as investigating an asteroid may have sounded, there was still the fact that colonist were missing. This was also no ordinary asteroid investigation. There was some sort of beacon transmitting somewhere on the asteroid. Then there were the other faint power readings. Something was definitely peculiar.

The Andorian nodded. "On it, Captain." He made his way on over to the console. "I'll even do you one better, and check the shields. Better to know now than in a firefight," he said. He put in a few commands. "75 percent," he commented. "I'll get them full asap."

"Same goes for you two," Fig said referring to the medical personnel she had brought with her. "Have your medical kits ready just in case, but I want those tricorders handy. We didn't have much of a luxury with science personnel right now. There are a bit preoccupied with the Boradis III colony matter. So, you two are going to have to pull your best biology, geology, and any science stuff you have to the surface," jested the Captain.

Kylian chuckled and checked his med kit for the millionth time. Better safe than sorry. He also checked his tricorder to make sure it was in working order as well. "You can count on us, Captain," he said cheerily. "Are we actually expecting to find new life on the Asteroid?" He had to admit that the prospect excited him.

Fig shook her head no in immediate response. "I'm no scientist, but the chances of something on that asteroid as life as we know it aside from some sort of single celled microscopic organism is about as much as I expect to find in terms of new life, and I don't expect the to have a vast civilization. What I am expecting is to find some old remote research facility of something that should not be there. It could be as simple as this asteroid collided with a hellishly sturdy probe and the probe is partially intact."

"Won't know till we knock on the door," the blue haired woman commented with a wide grin.

Kylian snorted in humor. "Look, I'm just excited to be on an away mission. I'll be happy with a rock. I've never even really been on an asteroid. I mean, simulations, yeah, but not the real thing. I'm super thrilled. I hope I brought enough sample containers." He started to go through his kits again.

"I am sure that you have plenty," Aeryn said hiding a chuckle behind her fingers, amusement perhaps not appropriate now. "Remember, that is not our primary focus please."

Kylian nodded. "Yes, Sir," he responded, trying to make his face more serious. Not that his attempt lasted very long and he was quickly back to grinning with his excitement. "Right... facility." He nodded again.

As the shuttlecraft neared the asteroid in question, Fig slowed their speed and began landing procedures. "Hold onto whatever you can and to each other, landing struts are coming down... and we're about to land," she announced. It was then that the console started to illuminate like a fluorescent orchestra and there was beeping that cut through. Sensors were detecting more than just the surface of the asteroid.

"I'm a little busy trying to find somewhere to touch down," announced the Captain. "Linwood, see what the hell that thing is screaming at me about," she ordered the medical officer. Donatella was focused on landing the shuttle in one piece.

"It's... I'm getting two things, Captain." Kylian gripped the edge of the console and the little bar above his head as the shuttle ride got a little rocky. "One is a distress beacon... the other is some sort of plasma leak. It seems to be connected to a ship? But... the beacon has been... that can't be right... that's like almost 100 years..." He stared at the viewscreen of the asteroid's surface and had a brief feeling that perhaps this wasn't such a good idea.

Fig was concerned yet very intrigued by that information as she was successfully able to set the shuttlecraft down albeit it scooted a little further than she wanted and had lunged her forward slightly. "Rough landing, but we made it," she announced confidently. "That's a awfully long time ago... there's no telling who or what that could be."

"I don't recognize the signal, Captain. It's almost like... wait... maybe it's an older form of Andorian?" Kylian guessed. His next best skill was his language ability. "I don't think I've ever heard this dialect..."

"If only we had an Andorian on this mission," said Fig sarcastically. She looked back and of course there was the simple solution. "I don't know how well versed or well read you are in the old form of your native tongue, Shras, but your assistance would be nice," added Fig. "Maybe it's a distress signal?" she offered.

Shras nodded. "It's been a while," he said. "I'm a little rusty, but I can make a few words out, Captain. We... Imperial Guard, ship Aroth... garbled words... Attack... Something about victory," he began. He took a breath. "Impulse... not functioning or broken. Along those lines." He rubbed his temples. "And a signal for help."

Aeryn unclenched her hands and rubbed them up and down her arms after the bumpy landing. "Interesting," she murmured under her breath. Ancient Andorian dialects and now ancient Andorians. Very cool.

"Not much of a victory if they crashed on this asteroid," Kylian chimed in. "Do they even call it the Imperial Guard anymore?"

"No," replied the Captain swiftly. "Which makes this mysterious energy reading actually fascinating. If the reading is coming from that Imperial Guard vessel, that makes the wreckage or whatever we have to deal with exceptionally old... pre-Federation. Andorians may be like the galaxy's cockroaches, but I don't expect anyone to have survived here for a century or more... nevertheless, phasers on stun and eyes wide."

"Cockroaches?" Shras said, weird look on his face. "What do you mean?"

Kylian chuckled. "She means you're a giant space bug, Lieutenant. Which you sort of are... I mean Andorians do have an open circulatory system... like an insect... and your dermis is much harder and thicker than ours. Sort of like chitin. It's not an insult actually. It makes your people very resilient in a large number of really varied environments. Although, I don't think lifespan would cover pre-Federation..."

"Ever see an Orion on a desert planet," teased Fig with a smirk. "They may be resilient, but take them away from the cool, cold, glaciated planets and plop them down onto Vulcan and they practically sizzle." The Captain looked at the two medical officers she had brought along. "If we do find Andorian corpses, by history's course, after their deaths, they became Federation citizens. We can't just leave them without attempting to recover their bodies or at the very least performing some sort of proper burial per Andorian customs," she noted.

"They should be buried with honor, I agree," Shras said. "Especially during to their service to the homeworld, and by extension the formation of the Federation."

Kylian was looking at his console again. "I'm not seeing any sort of atmosphere on the ship either, Captain. So the environmental suits are still on the table." He knew it was probably obvious that the suits were still needed, but he wanted to say so anyway.

"Then make sure your suits are secure and let's go visit that grave site," replied Fig. She was commanding and regal in dishing out orders, but there was also something very solemn and mournful. It was always difficult for her visiting the sites of destruction. When the Klingons had attacked several planets in the war, she had found herself there witnessing the aftermath. She had boarded plenty of starships that were left adrift or buried into the terrain of a planet.

Fig knew better than to try to squeeze out the hatch first. As Captain, there was no risking her life even if an area seemed to be safe. Her Security Chief would undoubtedly go first to secure the immediate vicinity ahead.

Shras Drew his phaser, just to be on the safe side. He didn't want to get surprised by any traps or anything. Because, being Andorian himself he probably would have done the same thing. He gave the "safe " signal and entered, cautiously

The rest of them would follow, but Fig placed herself ahead of the medical officers. She was especially protective to the Science and Medical personnel. It was perhaps because she felt they weren't always prepared for the dangers. She had cut ahead of Aeryn and Kylian. "I'm not expecting much medically, but I would like to know the cause of death when we do find the corpses of the crew, but try not to violate any Andorian beliefs, and if there's any sign of Klingon lifeforms... forget the tricorders and switch to phasers."


Kylian followed along wherever he ended up in order, his tricorder out and scanning the area around them constantly. There was only a little bit of walking toward the ship that they had to do, but it was still hard to not bounce around all over the place in his environmental suit in the zero gravity. "Captain... there are still readings coming from that ship. Most of them seem to be alarms of one kind or another. That's a awful long time for an alarm to go off. I mean, the distress call I understand, but..." He rambled. "I'm not picking up any lifesigns though."

"It is... peculiar," she replied. "There has to be some sort of power source still active keeping some systems still active after all this time. It's gotta be one hell of a power source though. Could they have used something from the asteroid itself to power a generator?" she asked.

"To generate what?" Kylian asked nervously. "There's no life support working... engines are offline... no weapons... no shielding. Just a distress signal that's 90 years old... and a bunch of alarms." His tone was a tiny bit sarcastic. "Of course, maybe life support worked while there was life... 90 years is sort of outside most lifespans... for adults anyway. I mean, you'd have to assume that most of this crew was at least 18 years old... of course we are talking about Andorians... and they live a little longer then we do... about 130-150 years. So... I mean I guess survival would have been possible, for awhile..." He seemed to be rambling out of his own nervousness rather than sharing any sort of information he felt was pertinent.

Fig gestured with a bit of a shrug. "Anything is possible. For all we know they were carrying some sort of precious cargo and tried to keep it under ideal conditions until help arrived, but I highly doubt they were thinking help would come a century late," she added. "To keep a distress signal going this long, some power would be needed, but not nearly this much. No... there's definitely something odd about all of this."

"I agree," Shras said. "Putting myself in their mindset. It's the 2150's. Fighting Romulans. I wouldn't put it past them to rig something of a surprise."

Kylian looked sidelong at the Andorian in alarm. "You mean like... boobytraps?"

The group had been making progress toward the Andorian ship while they talked. It definitely didn't look like it was landed here on purpose. Large parts of the hull were twisted, damaged or torn away altogether. Score marks from weapon's fire still scarred its hull, the Andorian symbol still clear on the side of the ship. Just as Kylian had asked the question they had reached the edge of an exposed section where the hull was torn away in a large enough piece that they could easily step onboard the ship through the gap.

"Seems like a reasonable assumption," Aeryn murmured closing her eyes for a moment to ease the slight burn in her eyes.

Kylian held out his tricorder. "I'm not reading any explosives..." He pulled his tricoder back to himself and looked hard at it. "This asteroid is crazy... we gotta get samples of it." He was nervous about going aboard the Andorian vessel. He was stalling a little.

Fig nodded. She was not a scientist, but even she could see the value in some scientific research here. "I agree it is... crazy as far as asteroids go. Collect some samples for later analysis. We have better equipment aboard the Musashi. You'll make the Science Department happy with some space dust," she teased. "This is a historical find nonetheless... old Andorian ship relatively intact... ish," she added. Fig took a look around and proceeded through the downed ship. "We need to find the source of that reading."

The interior of the ship was dark. Once the team was inside they could hear the alarm from somewhere deeper in, but the consoles and panels along the outer corridors were dark. It was eerily devoid of people, even though it was totally destroyed and obvious why the people were gone it still created a vibe that made Kylian's hair stand on end. He kept his tricorder out in front of him, scanning everything around him. He was mostly worried about dangerous leaks, not that anything leaking would still be leaking, considering how long the ship had been sitting here like this.

"It goes without saying that they don't make them like this anymore... and that's not a bad thing," noted the captain. "However, I am pleasantly surprised by how much has remained intact after all this time. We may want to have the Musashi launch a beacon after we are done here. Federation Archeologist would undoubtedly want to study this wreckage further."

"Study..." Kylian started and then stopped, looking intently at his tricorder. "Captain, that alarm we're hearing... it's... close. Like beyond those doors..." He pointed down the corridor that they were currently walking down to two double doors at the end, scorch marks from fire marred the surface of the doors. "How close are we to the bridge?" he asked nervously. They had come onto the ship though a random hole in its hull. They could be anywhere.

"If I'm reading this right, it should be down that way. Through those doors and to the right.." Shras drew his phaser. "I'll take point. Hold here for a minute," he said, as he inched forward. Picking up a piece of debris, he centered himself at the door. He threw the debris and was relieved that all he heard was a loud clang. "All clear," he said.

Kylian grumbled under his breath. "Didn't I just say it was that way... I said "beyond the doors"." He trudged up behind Shras, his tricorder out. "Did you think there was going to be something there we couldn't see with the tricorder?" he asked the Andorian. "Do your people set actual booby traps?" His tone wasn't judgemental. He seemed genuinely curious.

Captain Figueroa shook her head, a small smirk was evidently worn on her face. The bantering of her officers was amusing to her, but the seriousness of this find eclipsed her momentary amusement. She placed a hand on Kylian's shoulder. "Tricorders are only as helpful as they can be...better to be safe than rely too heavily on technology. We've encountered species before who leave no life signs or have found means to mask them."

Kylian eyed the captain. "I hadn't thought of masking life signs. Or not showing any on the tricorder. I always believed that our eyes can be deceived, but the equipment should be trusted." He nodded. "I guess the equipment can be deceived as well, but the alarm is definitely coming from behind those doors." He pointed again, as they paused in the hallway. "I was also certain that bodies don't really decompose in space and yet there are no bodies here... although we did come through a giant hole in the hull so they could have floated away."

"Possibility," replied Fig. "At this point, it may be difficult what damage came from the crash and what potentially came from what caused them to crash here. There could have been hull breaches prior to crashing," noted Fig. "That's something for an archeological team to figure out... through the doors, we go then," said Fig. She gestured to the doctor. "Be my guest," added the captain.

Kylian snorted and chuckled. "Oh yeah... me go first, cause I'm great in combat situations," he joked, albeit sarcastically. He did, however, step forward to the doors. When they wouldn't open the team once again waited for a moment for the security team to pry them open. The open doors revealed a room that definitely didn't look like the bridge. Kylian held up his tricorder again before moving into what he totally recognized as their medical bay. The alarm was definitely coming from this room.

The medical bay, however was almost completely taken over with what looked like cryo chambers. There were eight of them, all arranged in a circle around the room. They were in various states of disturbed and undisturbed. "Captain!" Kylian said in surprised, turning back to look at the group through the open door. "They're stasis chambers. They went into stasis..." He turned back to the pods, his tricorder still in front of him as he entered things into it, the device taking samples of everything he entered.

"Stasis?!" the immediate response came from Fig who wasted no time forcefully moving Sharas aside to get a better look herself. "After all this time? Could these units still be functioning? How are the occupants?" she added swiftly, looking at Dr Linwood and Nurse Vinia.

Kylian was carefully examining each bed one at a time. "I don't know yet! I'm working on that." The chambers were clouded from years of sitting, it was hard to see what was inside them, although several of them were damaged badly, from debris falling on them, that the occupants were long dead, their bodies still mostly intact in frozen death. He found the chamber that was attached to the alarm, the beam from the ceiling had fallen into it and remained so. He turned off the alarm and shook his head. "It looks like they're all dead, Captain..."

What did you expect, Donnatella? It's been decades she thought to herself in silence.

Then the young doctor turned to the last chamber and noted that it was definitely in the best shape of the ones that had come before it, the control panel still blinking. "Wait! Captain!" Kylian almost couldn't believe it, if it hadn't been happening to him. "All these years? There's no way!" He rubbed one arm over the surface of the chamber to clear it and sure enough there was an Andorian on the other side of the glass, perfectly preserved, potentially still alive. "No way..." Kylian repeated out loud, mostly to himself.

Fig rushed to Doctor Linwood's side. She saw a flash of blue skin as well. Of course, Nurse Vinia would be there beside them in a heartbeat at the word of the discovery. "Remarkable," muttered Fig, awestruck by the discovery. "He... looks... peaceful." She fumbled around with words, trying to get it out. "I don't want to be the one to kiss this sleeping beauty back to life. We need to get him back to the Musashi," she said, looking at Kylian.

Kylian had been staring in disbelief, almost as if he was in total shock. He jumped a little when the captain addressed him, his mind churning with a million questions. "Yes, Ma'am. I'll make arrangements for it to be transported back to the ship. We'll have to take the whole chamber and make arrangements for it to run on our ship. It might take a little bit of time." He was going over the connections and cables that attached to the chamber. "There's no way we can take him out of stasis here."

"Aeryn," the Captain called out as she looked up and over at the blue-haired woman. Her background as a Psychiatric nurse was what the Captain was seeking at the moment. "I know this is not ideal and out of your professional comfort zone, but what are the dangers to him psychologically if we can wake him aboard the Musashi?"

"Hard to say, it depends on how much Andorian physiology has changed over the centuries. They tend to be heartier than humans who often had Cryo hallucinations when woken." She raised her hand in a 'I don't know' gesture. "More danger to us than to him I'd say. I can research it more when we return."

Kylian had been going over the information he had and communicating with the ship about transport. "Captain, it's going to take them a few moments up there to be ready. The power supply to the chamber is, of course, considerably older than our technology so they're making adaptations to ours now. We can't risk losing power to the system and the back up power on his thing isn't working anymore. So we have to keep that power outage as short as possible."

Fig looked at Kylian. "Make it so," she said with a nod. "Aeryn, begin that research once we get back," added Fig looking at the blue-haired woman. She took one last look around the damaged vessel. "Once Musashi gets a lock on our frozen friend here, our job is done. This is for Federation scientists and engineers to pick apart. It's quite a discovery, but we have our orders."

Kylian nodded. "Only a few more moments and we can get going." He raised his gaze from the cryo chamber to the captain. "We're not going to get to look around more?" Not that he really wanted to. He was more fascinated to get to potentially meet the oldest living Andorian in record.

Fig smiled a small smile. "With a colony potentially in some form of danger and the nature of our assignment, we're going to have to leave these stones unturned for the time being. We made the discovery and that will be in the historical records."

It took all of twenty minutes for the crew aboard the Musashi to prepare to receive the chamber. They transported the pod directly into the main room of sickbay and connected it as quickly as possible. Kylian went with it, overseeing the operation and keeping a close eye on the vitals of the Andorian in status.

The Captain looked at the remaining members of her team. "Let's get a move on and get of this piece of space rock."