Board Thread:The Mech Bay Bar'n'Grill/@comment-24930445-20140526230330/@comment-24930445-20140608014841

Scott's World

Sipping a cup of coffee, Kat had her ankles crossed on a tabletop in the common room listening to Korbin continue his two day prattle about the device, its properties and its various potential applications. She smiled softly at the thought of how much work the little crew onboard Darwin had found to do within the first six hours of the good doctor’s dissertation.

She hadn’t minded so much. She had been interested (at first), but when he began repeating himself, she had begun to filter him. Starship propulsion.. blah blah… medical breakthroughs.. blah blah… other artifacts this culture had created… blah blah.

Jarrid’s voice slipped through the filter, breaking the monotony of the past two days. “That’s odd.”

Dropping her feet to the foor, Kat smiled at Korbin who had continued to prattle on as if he had been in front of a theater of students. Standing, she made her way to the sensor room. “Wha’s up?”

Ben slipped in behind her as Jarrid began pointing to the screen. “Ben. Remember the last time we were here? Tropical forrest, right? Had to plow through with those machete's, it was so thick ”

Ben nodded. “The mosquitos could carry you off to feed their young.”

Jarrid chuckled, taking the coffee from Kat’s hand and sipping from it. Shuddering, he handed it back and scowled up at her. Returning his attention to the screen, he muttered something about her having added sugar and being a heathen because of it before continuing his explanation. “Yeah well. No need to worry about those mosquitos. Mother nature is seriously PMSing out there. Sensors are picking up lightning storms on all four continents as well as a couple of volcanos. Several wildfires are burning out of control and it looks like that’s been going on for quite a while. The ash cloud is immense and it seems to have brought the temps to their knees.”

Ben frowned. “Fires? We couldn’t even intentionally build one when we were there. We had to eat cold rations.”

“They took the device,” Korbin said from the door, apparently having realized his audience had abandoned him. “Who knows what this place would have been like without it. Maybe like it is now.”

Jarrid nodded. “Well, we’ve got a full blown barbeque going all over the damn place. Doesn’t look like our area is affected, but we’re going to need breathers to slog through the ash. Its damn near winter conditions out there now, so wear your woolies. Given the destruction I can see, we may be coming in on the tail end of it, though. I’m getting readings that whatever energy caused all this is starting to die down.”

“Energy readin’s?” Kat leaned closer to pick out the information on the screen.

Jarrid nodded. “Seems the source of all this chaos is centralized, for the most part. The main concentration of energy… a spike, if you will… is coming from this point here then filtering out towards the rest of the planet.”

Ben smiled. He hadn’t thought it would be this easy. “That’s it. That’s our target. Is there a safe place for Sandy to set us down near our focal point?”

Jarrid punched a few buttons and the view size increased. “Yeah, you got lucky. Looks like the fires burned the entire area around that spot.”

“We got lucky. Unless you thought I was carrying that stuff by myself.” Ben slapped Jarrid’s shoulder and turned to head back to the cockpit.

Jarrid winced, then glanced up at Kat. “Sugar? Really? Have you no shame?”

_____________________________

The Darwin wasn’t exactly aerodynamic, but spacecraft engineers had long before discovered ways to use shaped energy fields to cut through the atmosphere of a planet. The Darwin smoothly made the transition from orbit to aerial flight without the pyrotechnics experienced by the early astronauts on reentry. As the ship dropped below the speed of sound the cabin suddenly filled with the roar of the air currents outside.

Sandra was tightly focused on the task at hand. The Darwin slammed through thunderhead after thunderhead, barely noticing the turbulent storms, but that was mostly due to her skill at the controls. Ben sat next to her in the copilots station, resisting the urge to give her advice. He knew just how dangerous this reentry was and didn’t want to distract her. More than that, she was more qualified than he was to fly the ship in.

Behind them, Jarrid clambered up the ramp, cursing once or twice as the air currents shook the ship, knocking him against the wall. He took one of the rear seats and buckled himself in before taking the time to rub his shoulder. “Everyone’s buckled up. I think this is the most quiet Korbin has been the entire trip.” he said.

Ben nodded, eyes focused out the windows. At the moment there wasn’t much to see. Dark clouds rushed past the reinforced glass, occasionally lighting up as static discharged against the Darwin’s deflectors. After about ten minutes they had descended far enough into the planet’s atmosphere that they dipped below the clouds and could see what lay ahead of them.

Jarrid drew in a sharp breath at the sight. Fires had already ravaged the area below them and the jungle was gone. Tortured black shapes loomed where some trees had held out against the firestorm, but far more ground lay bare. The fire must have been hot enough to completely consume the forest.

Ahead of them a stone shape stood out. It was clearly not a natural outcrop of rock, but a man made structure. Sandy flew past the structure to the left and Ben carefully surveyed the terrain around it, double checking the sensor readings as he did so. “The ground is clear for a hundred meters in any direction. Ground looks stable right out front.”

Sandy nodded, turning the ship and making a slow pass before hovering in front of the structure. The whir of motors gently vibrated through the ship as the landing gear lowered and the ship set down.

The structure loomed ahead of them, stark and blackened. The building had withstood the flames, but the stones told the tale. Intense heat had ravaged every inch of stone.

From above the structure had been roughly square. At ground level, it stood about half again as tall as it was wide. The front face was dominated by a grand entry way, but the doors had been ripped from whatever hinges had held them in place. A dark foreboding hole gaped at them.

Ben unbuckled as Sandy powered the ship down. As he climbed past her he again put his hand on her shoulder. It was starting to become habitual. She smiled and continued her procedures.

Jarrid was still rubbing his shoulder as he followed Ben down the ramp. “Serves you right for clambering about during a reentry,” he scolded half heartedly.

“Wanted to see the show,” Jarrid protested.

They poked their heads into the middle room where Kat and Korbin were strapped in. “Down safe,” Ben announced. “There are parkas stowed over there. Breather masks too. We’re going to need them.”

Kat had maintained her coffee and, somehow, miraculously managed not to spill it all over Korbin during reentry. She had just downed the last of it as Jarrid looked on enviously. Popping the buckle on her seat, she stood, leaving the cup on the table she had been sitting at. Korbin followed her to the locker where she pulled out a mask and parka for the scientist. As he began to slip the items on, she retrieved her own and prepared for the trip outside.

They could hear Ben and Jarrid moving around in the cargo bay ahead of them and after a moment a gust of wind and the smell of ash permeated the air as the cargo bay doors opened. The bay’s machinery was hard at work and the pallet with Korbin’s equipment was moving forward through the opening, propelled by anti grav fields that gently lowered the equipment to the ground outside. Once the equipment was out Ben closed the doors again, reducing the harsh smell of the burned jungle. The air handlers kicked in, working to clear the fumes out of the compartment, but it would take some time.

Sandy joined them at the foot ramp a moment later. Ben handed her a parka and a mask and the group climbed down. It took them some time, but between the four of them and quite a bit of badgering at first from Korbin about the sensitivity of the equipment in the crates, they managed to get everything inside the doorway and down into the calmer depths of the temple. They managed to lose Korbin after the initial trek into the temple, his fascination with the architecture and various glyphs in the main hallway sending him into his own little world. None of them seemed to mind, though.

“Next time, we steal a lift from the techs.” Jarrid muttered to no one in particular as he and Kat hefted one of the larger crates down the stone stairs.

Once the crates were secured, Jarrid was able to pull Korbin away from his musings long enough to unpack and inspect the equipment that had been inside. Kat took the opportunity to wander.

The foyer they had chosen to set up in was large. Stone walls were carved with reliefs of the ancients who had built the temple detailing what appeared to be their religious and cultural beliefs. She found several that represented daily life; farming, children playing, she even found what appeared to be the stone cutter’s homage to himself. Her fingers lightly traced the deep grooves, a soft smile playing across her lips.

“You ok?” She had heard Ben step up behind her, but she continued to watch her fingers play over the stone.

“Aye. Why wouldnae I be?” Her voice was soft, almost reverent.

“No funny headaches? No weird tinglings?”

She understood his concern and she turned, smiling at him. “I’m fine. Mognieo taught me how t’control it for th’ most part. Tis still fairly unpredictable in extreme emotional situations, but…” She smirked and shrugged at him. “Hae ya looked at th’ work in here? Th’ man was incredible! Th’ artistry…”

Sandy had stepped up next to Ben, slipping her hand in his. “Who says it was a man?”

Kat laughed, then turned to point to the relief she had been fascinated with. “He signed his work.”

“Hey! You slackers done with your lunch break? We could use a hand over here!” The annoyance in Jarrid’s voice spoke volumes. Korbin had been complaining about the supposed rough handling of his instruments and the griping was irritating the usually calm electronics expert.

Kat hooked her arm through Ben’s free one as the three of them made their way back to the doctor and Jarrid. “Ok. We’re up and running. You two get on with whatever you’re going to do, I’m going to have a look around.” He held up the little scanner to indicate his meaning.

“You have another one of those?” Ben asked. “Might as well make myself useful.”

Jarrid smirked as he dug into a box, coming up with not one, but two duplicate scanners. He offered one to Sandy then to Ben. Jarrid turned to include Kat in his smirk. “Alright kids. Have fun. No touching the weird stuff.” Sandy laughed softly as she followed Ben and Jarrid into the next chamber.

Korbin and Kat’s progress was much slower. Kat was in charge of the 3-D scans while Korbin analyzed samples of pretty much everything. Her scans would later be rendered into a program and stored in the holodeck computer for later detailed analysis of the entire temple.

An hour later, they finished with the foyer and moved into the adjoining room to begin the whole process all over again.

“Kat. You’ll want to come in here.” She glanced up at Jarrid standing in the far entrance to what looked like a long hallway.

“Aye.” Flipping the switch to the imager, she made sure it had begun its scan before following him down the hall.