Checking Out the Damage

Posted on Thu Dec 26, 2019 @ 1:58pm by Ensign Calaban Bel-Asher & Lieutenant Alanna Wells

1,537 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Doors of Perception
Location: Pangaea Portal Complex
Timeline: MD24 1030

[ON]

Jason had been gone for three days. Alanna tried every day to talk to him, but she couldn't get through to the ship. Even the small plush tribble with sharp, pointy teeth was returned to her.

She was growing increasingly worried. So, when she read a report about the portal, she contacted Calaban and asked him to meet her in her office.

A few minutes later Cal came in. Despite wearing a pristine white lab coat and teal trimmed uniform, he still managed to give of the air of someone wearing board shorts and a baggy vest. "You rang, Master." he intoned in a dramatic voice.

She chuckled. "Nice entrance. To get straight to the point, what is your opinion on the status of the portal site after the...return of the away team?"

"Well, it went bang in a fairly final way, I'd say." Cal sat down on a chair infront of Alanna's desk, "But the marines have been clearing it out. THe path they have to the chamberis still functioning. Its just taking a while to dig out as they have to do it by hand. There's a lot of mess they say, though we should probably go take a look ourselves."

Alanna nodded. "I agree. We should make sure the cavern is stable, clean out the rubble, and remove the core--or what's left of it. I don't want anyone trying to sneak in because they think there's something valuable in there. And I don't want to deal with the Romulan Ambassador until I have something concrete to tell her. I've managed to avoid her so far, but it won't last much longer."

"I don't think anyone can sneak in. Those marines are pretty ferocious. I'm more worried about being eaten alive by the Romulans. I don't know what that core was originally for, but I bet you donuts to Dyson spheres that now they realise what's on Pangaea, it can do a whole lot more than they ever thought."

"More and less," Alanna said. "I think it has its secrets, but they aren't what command thinks they are. Either way, I want to see what's left of it."

"Your wish is my command, boss. I'll call down for a shuttle, let Sh'Zera know we're coming. Leave it with me."

---

True to his word, thirty minutes later they were clipping signal boosters to their uniforms and following Sergeant Zhou into the caves.

"The path is still intact, the same caves," he assured them as they passed into the transitions, "And the cave structure is intact no cave ins. but. Well, You'll see."

They crossed the last threshold and saw the ruins of the cave. The pylons were in lumps no bigger than a child's fist, the dark marble. There were small chunks of the cave walls blown out, but no more damage than that. But the most striking thing was the guardian was missing, and everything was covered in a fine black dust.

"That makes me sad," Alanna said, looking around. "I'm going to miss that sentinel." At the same time, she was glad there would be no more visitors from that particular universe. "Let's bag the portal pieces, collect as much dust as we can for later analysis, and see what we find as we go."

Calaban flipped his tricorder out. And sighed. "There's so much background radiation I can't tell if there's anything left of the portal itself."

"We won't know for sure until we clean this place out," she said. "There are places in the complex where you walk down a corridor and end up in another universe, so it's possible the portal itself still exists. And if it does, we have to find some way of keeping people out. But first, to find out what's left, and what works."

Alanna grabbed several large bins. One she marked for pieces of the portals, one for sentinel dust. Others were for rock and debris.

The answer to what was left was, enough black marble to make two obelisks, enough dust to make one man sized statue, the shattered remains of several stalactites, a bath's worth of fallen rock, and one Romulan Core.

The casing had some dents from where it had been hit with flying masonry and falling debris, but largely it held a heavy covering of the fine black dust. Bel-Asher ran his fingers through it, finding it an inch thick.

Dusting his finger off over the bin set aside for it, He frowned. "If some guardian dust got inside the casing, who knows what merry hell it could have wrought."

"It'll need a thorough cleaning," Alanna admitted, looking at the dust. "I wonder if the sentinel protected any of it or was obliterated when the obelisks went? I wish there was some way to bring him back, but that's beyond our ability." She carefully collected the dust and added it to the bin. "I've got some people who are good with cleaning out old computers. I'll see if they can get this one up and running again."

"Hopefully they can work fast. I suspect the ambassador is going to be very unimpressed with our late delivery."

"Once we get this back to the station, I'll go talk to her," Alanna said. She wasn't looking forward to it, but better her than the commander, who had enough on her plate right now.

They worked in silence for a bit. The Marines had managed not to do too much extra damage when they cleared the entrance, but dusting the casing off showed a great deal of charring and scorching underneath. "Um." Calaban said. "This looks quite serious."

Alanna turned to look at the core. "Oh, my. Yes, it does." She went to her bag and pulled out her tricorder, carefully scanning it. "There's damage. I don't know if anything can be retrieved. We'll have to take it apart and clean it." She looked at Calaban. "If we don't recover something, we'll have to make reparations."

Calaban looked up at the ceiling. Debating something internally. "So. I did something not very ethical."

"And..." she said, encouraging him to continue. She wasn't sure if this was going to be a good thing, or a bad thing. "Exactly what did you do?"

"Well time was of the essence, so I beamed it to the runabout." Calaban looked sheepish. "And because I wasn't sure what the planet would do to the core, I got the transporter system to...make a copy."

A slow smile spread across Alanna's face. That was the best news she'd heard lately. "A good call. It was risky to use the core at all, even though it was necessary. I'm glad you made a backup. The question is, will it function the same in a new core, or was it the core itself that was picking up tachyon waves?" She waved off her question. "Something we'll have to find out as we go along. So, we can't tell anyone about the runabout, but we can replicate parts to repair the core and then replace the data. I suggest we keep a copy just in case it doesn't work." Her smile turned into a grin. "I'm very glad you took that precaution."

"Weeeeellllll," Cal said, trying to look innocent. "I want to be very clear, Leonora wasn't in on this. Lieutenant Kivan doesn't know either. This was all me. But I was thinking that, rather than fix it, we could give them the now dud core, and keep the perfect working replica ourselves. It would give us a head start over the Romulans..."

Alanna considered that for a long moment, then shook her head. "I can't. I'll be working with two Romulan scientists on Pangaea. I can't lie in good conscience." There was a definite twinkle in her eye as she added. "The agreement is that we explore the core together, so they won't have it to themselves. And I don't need to tell them we have a copy. Just in case."

"It might be useful to be able to verify their 'findings'." Calaban agreed. "Shall I ask engineering to build us a very secure hiding spot for it?"

She thought about that. While she knew that engineering would do a good job, she wanted as few people as possible to know about the duplicate core. "Not right now. Perhaps later. We could find a place in here for it. Or we could easily hide it in one of the science labs."

"I'll have one cleared when we get back." He looked around. "In a funny way, Maybe this is for the best. We'll get to examine a guardian and a pylon in more detail. We know what not to do to a portal that doesn't want to open. And we've got a full Romulan core to the other sides half...." he tapped the heat damaged casing. "...maybe less."

"We have a lot of data we didn't have before," Alanna said, agreeing with Calaban. "Fortunately, we also have time to study it." She smiled at him. "Good work."

[OFF]

Calaban Bel-Asher
ACSO
DS5

Lieutenant JG Alanna Wells
Chief Science Officer
Deep Space Five

Master Seargeatn Jian Xhou
Starfleet Marines
NPC by Soran

 

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