Dangers in Discovery

Posted on Sun Jan 10th, 2010 @ 1:40am by

1,258 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: POWERING UP THE STATION
Location: Tiberius V
Timeline: Current

ON

The planet had finally been picked after ferrying an ambassador and captain around to every world in the system. Now came the actual hard, but fun part; building the foundation of the society. Half the crew would be working to construct shelters and get a head start on building farms, while the other half researched this place.

[NES Destiny]

"Constructing teams four and five to dropship Shadow. Recon platoons two and six to dropship Celestial" came over the coms and echoed through the halls of the ship. Ever since the deal had been struck the dropships had been running continuously back and forth to ferry people down. There were transporters, but they were too slow and wouldn't handle the machinery too well; if not for the wide range of operation it may well have paid off to just land the ship.

"Come on, lets go!" Lieutenant Pasel yelled to the scientists and soldiers headed for the Celestial. There was a lot of ground to cover and they wanted to learn everything they could as fast as they could; not to mention the dropship could and would leave without them.

Realization dawned on the scientists, who to this point had been taking their time as they moved half the ship's science gear down to the drop ship. 'Double time' couldn't describe their pace as the pace picked up from a relative two kilometers an hour to slipstream.

"Now THAT is what I like to see" Pasel said, grabbing his duffel bag and continuing on his way to the drop ship.

[Dropship Celestial]

Earlier the drop ship's had been completely empty, at this point there was gear in every cargo bay and on the lifts waiting to be lowered to the deployment deck. Vehicles ranging from skiffs to water craft to the twenty-fourth century jeep covered the deployment deck, all strapped down to the decking just barely to regulations.

The deck shook slightly as the craft released from the Destiny's side and rolled to match the planet's horizon for level flight. Fuel effeciency went out the door as well, the pilots were gunning the engines and skipping the safety lecture from earlier; if you didn't know now you'd have to learn the hard way.

After a few minutes a sense of deceleration came over just about everyone aboard as the ship slowed to a stop over the ocean. As the back hatch opened second platoon unharnessed and mounted their two skiffs waiting ahead of them. These ones lacked the boosters, just had standard flight thrusters and rotors.

"Your clear!" the deck crew chief yelled into the coms, the second he did the skiff's dropped to full reverse and dropped into the water and onto their mission of recon. Essentially they had to get a 'feel' for the area and seek out any potential threats to the colony.

"Full speed ahead corporal" Lieutenant Pasel ordered, "not much for us to look at here and now, take us over land and head north for the science camp."

Without a word the corporal took the craft towards land, following over a sort of recon grid close to the coast-line. The craft kept low and managed to stay low for a while, only going over the trees every now and then for short durations. So far, so good.

[Dropship Celestial - Science Camp Alpha]

While the troops reconed, the scientists had a base to set-up far to the north of the Neyel's land. After a good half hour or so the dropship slowed down and began its decent to a coastal clearing, here there were few trees and none of them as enormous as the rest; a perfect spot for a camp and LZ.

Landing struts dropped out as the craft closed to the ground, once down it angled back to allow the ramp to actually touch the ground. The second the ramp was down, scientists loaded down with equipment came pouring out like an unending rain, behind them troops carried defensive equipment, shelters and scientific gear.

Within an hour the dropship had been stripped bare of anything that wasn't bolted down, crates and equipment were scattered around the area. A pretty big chunk of them had been opened and were in the process of being emptied to set-up shelters. Meanwhile the area around the dropship was cleared and it took off, making best speed for the Destiny to take someone else, somewhere else.

[Recon Platoon]

"Lieutenant, I'm getting life signs" a Corporal said, "looks like its a larger animal, good be a problem if they go after any of the camps."

"Alert the other skiff we're taking a detour" Pasel ordered as he unharnessed and stood up, the rest of the marines following suit, "take us near by, Deniri, Niki and I will head down, rest of you stay ready to provide cover."

The craft moved towards a clearing and hovered just over a large tree branch, the Lieutenant and supporting troops jumped out of the side and started running through the trees in search of this creature whatever it was.

Just as the fire team came up on the life signs, they vanished, as if they'd never existed. "sir, I lost the signal" Deniri said, totally stumped, "its just... gone."

"Now that's freaky" Niki said, dropping to a crouch and taking a better look at the tree line around them. Seconds ticked by and then minutes, soon it became clear that whatever they had been following, it was a mystery they wouldn't solve today.

"Alright, back to the skiff" Pasel said, taking up the rear as they headed back to their craft to get out of there and back on the recon trail. "Mark this position, I want someone checking in here for whatever that was."

As the marines boarded their skiff, an alert chimed. It was after dark and the science camp was looking for them, now pushing an hour late for their check in. "Tell em' we're on our way" Pasel replied to the unasked question. "Ok, suggestions about what that was?"

"No idea sir" Deniri answered, "I've never seen anything act like that. Even if it had died right then we would have had some readings yet. Wait a minute, I got something!"

[Science Camp]

"Where are they?" Barelly asked, pacing back and forth outside the command tent and scanning the perimeter with a pair of binoculars equiped with night vision.

"Looks like they're coming in hot sir" another said as he walked out of the tent, tricorder in hand showing their approach. "I got a real bad feeling about this one."

In an instant, the skiff burst out of the darkness and all but slammed into its designated landing pad. Before it had even stopped the marines were out and scanning the darkness, rifles raised as if to shoot something that would have been chasing them but nothing came.

Lieutenant Pasel gave a brief order to fall out to his unit, then reported to Barelly, "sir, something's out there, its big, its fast and I don't know how we got away."

"Lieutenant, our sensors didn't show anything but your team running every red light between the DZ and our LZ."Barelly said, "you sure your men are alright?"

"That's what we thought, but we had it on sensors earlier" Pasel explained, "it dropped off the scope just before it came for us."

"Get some rest, whatever it is we'll find it" Barelly said, then turned and headed for the command tent, "we'll debrief in the morning."

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