Space Bauble - Pt 2
Posted on 30 Oct 2022 @ 9:53am by Lieutenant Commander Cesar De La Fuente Ph.D. & Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Louke Haille & Chief Deputy Marshal: Ridge Steiner - FMS & Lieutenant JG Gabriel Lyons
Edited on on 13 Nov 2022 @ 4:25pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Aquatic Space Station (Pathfinder Away Team)
Timeline: MD08 1620HRS
1504 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure
The space inside was a dense kind of darkness— unlike outer space, there were no stars and it was completely black. Even though they had been beamed to a pre-selected surface, the sensation of floating began right away, there being no gravitation. To handle the lack of sense of orientation, Calliope instinctively magnetized her boots so as to keep to the decking. But as she tried, the boots didn't find anything nearby that was metallic. The inner surfaces must have been some other kind of composite. Calliope tried her best not to add any sudden movements that might propel her.
Others had reached for their headlamps first, and as the lights of the away team's helmets panned across what looked like very bumpy surfaced access paneling arrayed in strange curvatures in all orientations, Calliope quickly grew uncertain if she was looking at a deck or a ceiling or a wall.
There was the momentary odd feeling of being reassembled after transport then Steiner found himself in near darkness, the glow of his helmet display the only illumination. He also felt weightless, but unlike true weightlessness he could feel a resistant on his limbs from the water, he remained still so as not to begin drifting away. It took a moment to settle in to this new environment, but the darkness receded as other members of the Away Team activated their suit lights. He flipped his own on. The space was quite large, but unlike a normal compartment, this one had numerous walls and surfaces that ran in many different directions and orientations, nothing gave the impression of being up or down.
It was surprisingly cold, and despite the suits, Gabe felt goosebumps erupt on his arms. It had to be a psychosomatic thing, relating to the depth of water and darkness around him but he felt it all the same. "Interesting curvature of the room," he commented, pointing his spotlight towards the ceiling.
"It makes more sense now," De La Fuente offered as he floated casually about, almost buoyant without having to try. "The density of this water at this salinity makes the lack of square angles more obvious. They lacked the engineering expertise, so they spread the load... so to speak," he mused. "No flat surfaces inside either..." he said, looking around at the panels just about everywhere. "No need to if your crew can move at will through the station. I do wonder though..." he said, swimming towards a terminal high above.
Watching as other members of the team allowed themselves to begin to float, Calliope remained as still as possible and evaluated the readings in her visor display. They had a solid uplink to the Pathfinder so all of their scans would make it directly to the bridge. That was good. Team vitals were clear, everyone had made the transport fine. She set an arbitrary point into her wrist key pad and everyone's visor displays synced to the same directionals.
Calliope spoke into the helmet mic. "Okay, Steiner, you're with De La Fuente. Lyons, with me and Haille." Contrary to popular belief, Calliope loved having back up from Security personnel on all of her ops. A lesson she'd learned very early in her career. She just hadn't had the benefit of the authority to direct any for a while.
Calliope pointed 'up' towards where some kind of key feature in the architecture seemed to emerge, formed somewhat like a segment of curving nautilus shell, likely hollow and maybe channeling to other compartments. There was a similar feature about two thirds of the way around the compartment or room they were in. "You guys go high," she pointed back down. "We'll go low. Start with scans of this space and then move outward into any peripheral chambers. By my reckoning, from our readings of the exterior geometry, this room accounts for most of the volume of the open space though. The other chambers are likely to be smaller."
Chambers seemed like the appropriate word— like chambers of a sea creature's shell. The room was central, that was why they had chosen it as a beam in point, but it wasn't exactly spherical. As her visor modeled from scans, she was getting the sense the space was more imperfectly-egg shaped.
Steiner used his hands to paddle and drifted over by the Science Officer. "Ready when you are"
De La Fuente nodded in acknowledgment, the simple gesture pronounced in the EVA suit, and then reached out and touched an analog button on the panel in front of him. Somewhere in the station they felt a hum and a moment later, the gentle tug of gravity. Not enough to pull them to the deck plating, but definitively more pronounced than the zero-g they'd be operating in - water or not.
"That's different," Cesar mused, glancing over at his tricorder and then to Steiner, "Gravity's not pulling from the bottom of the station, but the middle. I'd like to have a few scans of that apparatus. It's on the far side. Shouldn't take a minute," he said. "I'm sure Commander Quinn would be interested in the tech. It's somehow creating a gravity well at a specific point in the station. It looks like the data core is next to that wall. You should be able to figure out just where this species came from. Maybe even a bit about them," he smiled, pointing up towards Commander Zahn and not giving him a moment to answer before pushing away from the wall and swimming a different way, aided by the gravity well to move a little faster.
Steiner rolled his eyes and pushed off to follow the science officer. He slowly spun himself around as he moved, trying to keep an eye out in all directions. Not sure what for, but it felt better to try and be alert in here.
Meanwhile, giving up on expecting any help from her boots, Calliope oriented herself in the water to make a direct line towards the other end of the chamber. She was aware of Lyons and Haille flanking her on either side as they all dove across the space. Calliope found herself reaching forward and stroking through the dim water in her familiar motion of her daily swims. It wasn't as intuitive in the environmental suit as it was in the pool. When Cesar initiated the systems, she had so many questions about the technology- how did an aquatic design handle power conduction safely in water? Were the internal systems vacuum sealed with air? Or was the power actually drawn from the saline, something like her first science project, powering a radio with a potato.
The room seemed to gently begin to glow, illuminated from behind translucent forms throughout the design and not radiating from light fixtures. The light seemed more... atmospheric and natural. The patterns in the wall they were approaching were formed from sweeping spirals and pearlescent. But as they got closer to some of the curved walls, she thought they were some kind of compressed composite, like a type of fiber glass that might have been printed or pressed to manufacture, and then interlocked in watertight seams. The manufacture was elegant in general design and yet... modular and if you looked long enough, some kind of repetitive in larger to smaller fractal forms. Her gut told her it was like a really pretty, highly mathematical version of the boring modular home manufacture process she knew from her childhood. Her planet had been more fans of repetitive mushroom shapes than of elegant seashells...
To her left Lyons seemed to float slightly ahead. Calliope presumed he was getting a first look inside the tunnel form, to be sure it wasn't hiding any threats.
"Are you getting scans of all this, Haille?" She asked, turning slightly to her right. She saw the glowing shapes reflected in his visor.
"Aye," Louke breathed, his eyes attempting to process what he was seeing. He tapped the controls regulating the data feed to try and get the best possible readings for the team once they returned; there would be a near glut of information to work through - most of it, he hoped - offering prime data for the command team.
"Let's have a look at what we're getting." Calliope tapped her wrist control to tap into Haille's readings. Having it running on her visor also allowed her to watch Lyons as he angled a light into the tunnel.
"It's interesting. Its like nothing I've ever seen before." Gabe reached out to lay a hand on the wall, which surprised him by being warm.
"Radiant heat..." Calliope touched the wall just after him and made a similar observation. The panels seemed to serve not just for lighting but also a very even environmental heating system. Even though it looked alien, everything made very practical sense. "I guess when it gets up to temperature, we'll at least know how they like their bath water."
