Finding the Aurora

Posted on Thu Dec 9, 2021 @ 3:17pm by Commander Ajani Carter & Lieutenant Commander Sunita Conlon & Lieutenant Commander Dr. Elisabet Intarrah Ph.D MD

Mission: Episode 6: Discovery
Location: Science Lab
Timeline: MD1
914 words - 1.8 OF Standard Post Measure

Carter had been sat at the back of the primary science lab reading through the reports and sensor logs of the Dyson net. It was incredible, while not nearly as massive as the sphere that the Enterprise D had 30 years before it was still... she shock her head. She was a pilot, and these kinds of numbers were mind blowing.

"Incredible. I never thought in all my lifetimes, I'd see an actual Dyson Sphere." Lise noted. "The power generated by this thing must be truly massive."

Sunny had just entered the lab after a quick briefing with the engineering team, "It must take a ton of power to run, as well. Maintaining artificial environments with artificial atmosphere and gravity across an entire system. Building a net like this would be a massive undertaking."

Ajani looked up "You have something?" she asked hoping they had found the Aurora.

Sunny lifted a hand toward Lise to let her go on.

"I found the Aurora." Lise noted. "I also found a whole lot of other things that are not supposed to be there." She brought up some sensors scans and zoomed in on what appeared to be a Brachiosaurus.

"So the platform is at least 65 million years old" she was surprised to find lost extinct animals from Earth here. They were a hundred lights years away... and 65 million years removed.

"That's just the thing, Ajani. Our sensors read the platform to be somewhere in the range of three million years. The species on this platform come from Earth around Two hundred million years to sixty million years give or take." Lise noted. "Not only is this partial sphere an incredible discovery. I believe someone may have used time travel to bring these species here." Lise mentioned. "Which means... those dull old kill-joys from temporal affairs might be showing up soon."

"Is there any sign of Time travel? Could they have just recreated them?" She thought back to a pre-Federation film "Like genetically recreated them?"

"Unlikely Captain. Even if Genetic Material could be found on Earth from Dinosaurs. We're talking about sixty five million year old DNA at the best, and the platform has a diverse variety of Flora and Fauna. In order to maintain this kind of ecosystem, every component has to be flawless, or everything will die. We're looking at a race of preservers that went through a great effort to preserve an ecosystem they found extremely fascinating. And technology that is beyond even our capabilities." Lise noted. "Not even the Federation has yet succeeded at building a partial Dyson Sphere. Not saying we won't pull it off one day. But this race concerns me." Lise noted. "You know that man on Jurassic Park that mentioned so elegantly that 'life finds a way?'"

"Yeah. That said if these animals have been here for 3 millions years then if life was gonna find a way it would have done so already. I am not worried about them escaping, and if any have evolved into sapient beings this is possible a pre warp civilisation and we would need to approach it carefully."

That did mean that they would have to be careful in the way they went about this rescue operation.

"The scans of the technology itself show a number of compounds and alloys that we're not familiar with," Sunny picked up the thread, "with apparently very little degradation over their time running. So either they are being maintained, or the builders were exceptional in their planning and execution. There doesn't appear to be evidence of differently aged technology on the surface, but it's hard to tell things apart from this distance. We're getting a lot of interference."

"How would we go about getting better data, this thing is massive" Carter looked at the holographic dyson net hovering in the middle of the room.

"We'll need to make sure that the team we bring to the surface can cover as many bases as possible, because we won't be able to predict exactly what we'll need to do once we're down there," Sunny advised.

Ajani nodded, "Put a team together, but make sure you have some heavy security with you. With the interference even with pattern enhancers we wont be able to get a lock on anyone."

"Ajani. These are the apex of the apex of predators from a time when survival was what it was all about. Even with our weapons.. we'll be solely outmatched if we run into a pack of Utahraptors."

Carter thought about this. "We have to send a team down to search the Aurora. Take Lowset and her fireteam. They are trained to deal with multiple moving targets." She hoped they wouldn't need it. Also," she started to brainstorm, "Would the UT's be able to translate any language they might have. I vaguely remember hearing that they had some kind of language, at least enough to coordinate attacks?"

tag Lise

"With the type 11 we can carry 12. A pilot, me, Commander Intarrah here and an assistant, Dr. Jossen and an assistant, two engineers, and that leaves Lieutenant Prenar and 3 other security officers. I think once we link up with the crew of the Aurora that should give us enough resources to be okay for a while."

"Find a space for another security, Lowsets fire teams works best when they are together." Carter insisted "And we don't know the condition of the Aurora's crew. They might not be of much use."

"Marines don't mind standing, right?"