The Search for the Scientists (part 3)

Posted on Fri Dec 6th, 2019 @ 7:59am by Lieutenant Commander Amber Quinn & Lieutenant JG Pippa Patterson & Lieutenant Trei Jansum & Lieutenant JG Paris Deville & Lieutenant JG Tiskatee Troilon & Lieutenant JG Tessa Nicoles
Edited on on Sat Dec 14th, 2019 @ 6:48am

1,500 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Caverns of the mind

[CONTINUED]

[OLD]

The door to the shuttle opened, allowing him to walk in, and take a seat in the main pilots chair. Once he was comfortable, he leaned back slightly and let out a deep sigh, allowing the music in his head to play uninterrupted. However, something was still eating away at him. His concern for the others. His concern for Amber.

[NEW]

Paris quickly sat back up in his chair and tapped on the console. He brought up the sensors and set up one of the monitors to display the groups position. It was nothing complicated, just a simple overlay of the current area, and a dot registering each away team member. He knew, however, once they entered the cave the signal will either be weak or nonexistent. Until then this was his best way of keeping track of them.

He leaned back in his chair again and watched the display carefully. "Computer: Play music."

"Please specify selection."

"That's Amore. Performed by Dean Martin from my collection." Paris replied, as he let out a sigh, as the music began to play. He couldn't help but smile at the song while still focusing on the display.

[Cave]

Amber waited for everyone who was going to join her to arrive. When they'd gathered, she took a piece of charcoal and marked the entrance to the tunnel, using her headlamp to guide the way. When there was a side passage or the tunnel split, she made more marks so they could find their way back.

Nicoles was running her tricorder when it gave a faint blip.

"Each Scientist has an implant." She said. "In the caves the signal is weak but I read at least one faint signal deeper into the cave..." She tried adjusting her tricorder. "Too thick to get a real read but several meters; maybe a dozen or fifty for all I can read just the slight ping off one unit ma'am." She pointed at a tunnel opening. "Most direct reading that way."

Amber knew from experience that when it came to caves, the most direct route was not always the right one. Passages tended to twist and branch off. This one could go in a few dozen feet and turn the wrong way while another one snaked around behind it. But until they actually tried one of the tunnels, they wouldn't know for sure. She nodded and led the way.

She continued to mark the path as they went deeper. They had to backtrack several times, even following what looked like the most traveled path. After about an hour, they came to a large inner chamber with water running into a large pool at the back. A Federation Sciences shirt was ripped and discarded on the ground near the water. Nearby were other articles of clothing, also torn.

Trei frowned, knelt beside the clothes and water, and picked one up to smell. Sometimes you could tell how fresh clothing was by smelling them. As a teenager, he would wear clothes a second day, maybe a third, but he wasn't going to broadcast that fact. Teenage boys seemed to be the most disgusting people on Betazed.

"It's been worn recently." He stood, dusted off his knee, and then shined his light on the ground around the clothes. "Footprints." He looked at Amber. "Shall we follow them, Commander?"

"I'd say they've been here since the people waring them abandoned the research station." She wouldn't call that fresh, but she didn't know what Trei was using as a reference point. "I want tolook around here before we move on." She looked around, her headlamp illuminating the cave and the water. She went over to it to check to see if the water was poisonous or not. Her scanner showed the mineral content was high, and would likely make someone sick, but it wasn't toxic.

She turned to the clothing. The way it was torn seemed to indicate that the person wearing it tore it off, rather than someone tore it off them. That was odd.

She turned back to the water and searched to see if anything had been dropped or thrown into it.

Trei went back to looking around the piled of clothes, looking for any clues, and his flashlight fell on a spider's web. "Commander," he called to Amber, "keep an eye out for spiders. There are a few webs over here."

"Thank you," Amber said, taking a sample of the water and scanning the clothing.

Following the footprints with the flashlight on his arm, he found a different tunnel branching off the first. "Commander, the footprints go this way."

Amber looked around at the others. "Everyone done here?"

Trei nodded, "Aye, commander." He looked around, wondering if everyone else was.

When they were all together again, Amber headed down the path. The footprints were barely noticeable without a triorder as the dirt was hard packed. She wondered why they were barefoot, and why they'd stipped off most of their clothes.

The tunnel went deeper and the slight echo of far off voices could just be made out as the cavern opened to a space with two side tunnels and a raised ledge opening into the third tunnel. Two; what might be called carved into the rock roughly shaped, steps lead up to the ledge and the source of the sounds were from that direction.

"Multiple life signs and I have just registered another of the tracking units." Nicoles reported from the back. "The rock is still interfering but there are life signs; humanoid types, through that higher tunnel from the readings."

Amber picked up the same thing. She could feel their thoughts, but they were primitive, simple. Basic. "We'll proceed with caution. Something is odd here." She paused. "I don't think they're dangerous, so resist using your phasers."

Trei lowered his phaser and put the light on his left wrist, wondering how their brain functions became so primitive in just a few months. "How did their brains devolve so quickly?" he asked.

The life signs; and transponder signals, were all clustered in a very large open cavern with a vaulted ceiling nearly ten meters in height and twice that in circumference. Three raised plateaus about four meters round and elevated two meters from caver floor, seemed to be where the most powerful of the natives occupy with several females surrounding them. One of the scientists was cooing up to the man on the center most platform while she kick other females away.

The Platforms were at the two o'clock and eight o'clock positions with a slightly off center platform six meters wide where the 'chief' kept court. The other members of the tribeal gathering were spread out around the cavern, half a dozen fires kept it warmer as the people huddled under pelt type blankets to keep warmer.

"I have all the Medical transponders." Tessa whispered. "We have located the Scientists."

"The question is, why?" Amber asked quietly. "Take readins and we'll go back to the shuttle for analysis." She carefully scanned the primitives. She also took air samples. She'd add that to the water samples she'd taken earlier.

Trei shook his head in bewilderment. He kept looking around, all senses on alert. He heard a whisper of movement and looked to see a very large spider crawling on a wall, making a web. It was barely larger than the largest in the Federation, but he didn't trust it to be non-venomous. He kept watch, also kept an eye on the spider just in case.

>>tag any

When they were done, Amber signaled for everyone to leave without making contact. At least for now.

Trei went first after Amber out of the caves, Troilon taking the rear. Normally he would have insisted on taking point, but this planet hardly presented any dangers other than the natural variety. As a scientist, he was satisfied with Amber's ability to take care of herself. In fact, she might know more than he did about wildlife. No, she did know more than him. When they emerged from the caves, he blinked in the sun. He shielded his face with his hand until his eyes adjusted.

Amber found Pippa waitinf for them. "Anything happen?"

"No. It's been pretty boring," the other officer reported.

"Good. Let's go back to the shuttle and report to the captain. We found the away team, but getting them out is going to be tricky."

"Is something wrong?" Pippa asked, falling in step beside the first officer.

"They're living with the cave dwellers," AMber said. "Somehow, they've devolved."

"Oh."

"Indeed. What we need to do now is find out what cuased them to devolve," Amber said. "And for that, I need to do more testing."

____
OFF

Lieutenant Paris Deville
Chief Flight Control Officer

Lieutenant Commander Amber Quinn
Executive Officer

Lieutenant JG Tiskattee Troilon
Security Officer

Lieutenant Trei Jansum
Chief Security Officer

Lieutenant JG Tessa Nichols
Assistant Chief Medical Officer

Lieutenant JG Pippa Patterson
Assistant Chief Operations Officer

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