Collateral Damage - A Sudden Detour Part IV

Posted on Wed 12th Aug, 2020 @ 11:19am by Lieutenant Elliot Jericho & Lieutenant Commander Kiara Lena

1,067 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Uncharted Planet in the Thetacron Sector
Timeline: MD: 15, 2100 hours

Old:

Kiara nodded. She wasn't ready to give up her argument but now was not the time. She nodded, grabbed a small grav cart, and loaded on the two duffels and headed out.

Elliot picked up his tricorder with his free hand and followed after her.


NEW:

Elliot used the tricorder to find a suitable cave for the two of them to weather it out for a couple of weeks possibly more. He hoped it would be much sooner than that bit they had to prepare the worse.

"I've found something." Elliot said as his tricorder indicated a hidden subterranean cavern just up ahead. His tricorder didn't pick it up until they were very close due to the dense pockets of minerals that interfered with his tricorder. "The opening is just over here." Elliot walked up to the entrance. It was completely concealed by vegetation grown over the humanoid sized opening. "I'm not detecting any life forms of significant size, but my range is limited and this cave system goes farther back than I can scan."

"Good," Kiara replied. "As long as there aren't any dangerous creatures taking up residence, it should work. I don't want to set up camp in the first cavern if there's anything farther back that will work. We're most likely going to be here for a month or more." She hoped it wouldn't take long to find the planet. "It'll take two weeks before they realize we're missing."

"If the starbase gets the distress signal with the system's coordinates it won't be too long, but if the signal was blocked then as you said, it could be a very long time before we are rescued.

"Yep. Might as well make this place as comfortable as possible," she said optimistically. One way or another, they'd come up missing and eventually someone would come looking for them. They only needed to stay alive until then.

"I just thought of something, you've been talking to Lieutenant Briggs almost everyday over subspace and pretty soon he'll know something is wrong when you stop contacting him. I'm sure he will try to get a hold of you." Elliot smiled when he felt a sense of hope but then frowned when something else came to mind.

"Unless he gets busy, or he thinks I am." He'd grown distant since she helped him find the murderer, it wouldn't be out of the question for him to have something come up and forget about her. She turned to look at Elliot. "What's wrong?"

Elliot shook his head, "They would have no idea where to start looking for us and we did make a detour towards this planet. It's a little of course, but its the perfect planet." Elliot thought for a moment, "If they leave us for dead then we might be able to put some things together to get out a distress call. We also might be able to rip out the replicator and something to power it, but we should wait a couple of days and see what happens."

She nodded in agreement. "Let's find a safe place to set up camp, then we can keep an eye out for our attackers." None of their plans would do any good if they were caught. They had to hide first.

"Why don't we go ahead and try this cave for today, like I said, it's massive. We can always try exploring and search for another shelter closer to a water source or something tomorrow. I think we should stay hidden for the rest of the day in case they are looking for us. With any luck they left us for dead." Elliot explained as he pulled back the overgrown plants revealing the dark entrance.

"Agreed. We can spend the time exploring the back of the cave to see if there's a secondary cave and perhaps a drinkable water source."

Elliot nodded and turned back to the entrance. He turned on his wrist lantern before walking inside. He held back the vegetation so Kiara could enter.

She pushed the anti-grav sled in front of her as she walked into the cave. She turned on her own light and looked around. "Impressive. Let's see what we can find in here." She had to admit that she was curious to see what the cave held.

Elliot dropped his heavy bag on the cave floor right where he stood. It was about 10 meters from the cave entrance. "There are all types of mineral in this cave." He said as he scanned with his tricorder. The range was still limited. "Maybe we can find something to use as a fuel source so we can have light." If they were going to be here a while they needed some amenities.

"We can get something from the shuttle for light. I'd rather find clean water." She smiled, knowing that both were necessary, and coming at this from two different angles would be beneficial if they had to spend any real-time on the planet. "We can leave our gear here for now and have a look around, then decide if this will suit. The mineral content will make it harder for them to find us, which is good, but if we can't get to a water source, it won't work."

"Sounds good," Elliot said as he began to dig out the rope and pitons and a expandable water jug. He looked up at Kiara once he was done, "Okay, I'm ready when you are."

She rummaged through one of her packs and pulled out a headlamp. She wrapped it around her head, turned it on to be sure it worked, then nodded. "Ready. Let's see what this cave has to offer." She made note of where they left their packs and began to search the perimeter of the cave.

She found signs that some creature used to live here, but they were old, as was the debris around the entrance. Farther in she found more rocks, but nothing of any real interest--although in a pinch they could use some of the larger rocks to shield them from intruders should anyone come looking. It was the back she found of most interest. There were three smaller openings that she marked for later exploration and might be just what they needed. But before she went into any of them, she continued around until they were back where they started.

 

RSS Feed

Comments (1)