Mining Frustrations

Posted on Thu Nov 11th, 2021 @ 1:45am by Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII & Lieutenant Xavier Leiko

Mission: With Gleaming Eyes
Location: Mining Site
Timeline: MD02
5083 words - 10.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Finn managed to catch Xavier in his office before he had headed out for the transporter room. The door was open and she leaned against the frame.

"I have your friend Teyo cleaning the transporter pads and recalibrating the system so I thought we could take a shuttle down to the surface. It'd be a shame to interrupt his work," she said with a smirk. Truthfully, Finn had assigned him the remedial task after he had barged in on the dinner with Mason and Kevan and made a complete show of things.

"Ready when you are," Xavier said as he grabbed a few PADDs and threw them in his case, before sealing it closed. He headed towards the door and studied the woman's expression. "What did he do?" He asked with an exacerbated expression.

"Where should I start?" Finn chuckled as they walked. "His most recent transgression was to barge in on a private dinner. Have you heard much about Senior Chief Petty Officer Malone's romantic interests?" She asked, knowing how quickly rumors and gossip tended to spread on a starship.

Xavier rolled his eyes, that was typical of the Trill, he had zero boundaries and clearly no filter. Tey wasn't Xavier's responsibility but for some reason he felt like he was. "Yeah, he's dating that other security officer right? Ken something? I met them both on Risa, when we got our nails done."

"Yea. We had put together a dinner to try to find out where Kevan's feelings actually lay in relation to Mason. It was supposed to be delicately handled, but you can imagine how delicate things were with Fenn in the mix. I can at least say that it may for quite the show," she chuckled.

"So who's piloting? You or me?" Finn asked as they entered the shuttle bay and walked towards their craft.

[Shuttlecraft]

"Just so long as you don't make me puke I don't care" The voice came from Chief Warrant Officer Victoria Bondi Douglas, the Security Master At Arms. Along side her was Security Petty Officer, both wearing holstered phasers and jackets. "Petty Officer Jackson and I are your protection detail" She smiled.

"I'm calling this one," Xavier said excitedly as his eyes lit up. "It's been too long since I logged any piloting hours, I never find the time these days." They boarded the small craft and Xavier climbed in the pilot seat and started the pre-flight sequence. As the computer checked over the various shuttle's primary and secondary systems, Xavier turned to face Finn who was in the seat right next to him. "I don't know why he does it you know," he said, clearly continuing their conversation from earlier. "Acts the way he does. I've never been able to figure him out, and I'm a telepath."

Douglas and Jackson piled into the back, shut the door and strapped themselves in.

"To be honest, I'm a little surprised that he joined Starfleet. He doesn't seem like the type. In fact, most of the time he seems bored or uninterested when it comes to actual work," Finn shrugged. "Anyway, on a scale of one to ten...how excited are you to be flying down to a pandemic-infested planet to secure some mining equipment?" She chuckled outwardly, but on the inside the thought of being in the thick of a pandemic made her skin crawl and she wasn't looking forward to it in the slightest.

"On the edge of my seat," Xavier said with a smirk. "I mean, who wouldn't want to be in Starfleet? Charting the unknown, making first contact, saving billions of people, or flying down to a world in the middle of nowhere to help a race of people who don't seem to learn from their mistakes." Xavier turned back in his seat and pressed a few buttons bringing the sensors and maneuvering thrusters online. Within a few seconds they were out of the shuttle bay and heading towards the orange/brown planet. "If you don't mind me asking, why are you so nervous?" He knew that she wasn't comfortable around telepaths, she was a private person and liked to keep her thoughts to herself. Even though he wasn't reading her thoughts, her emotions were screaming at him, she was almost glowing.

Finn tried to hide the irksome expression on her face as he asked. "Do you just always read my thoughts and emotions?" She asked with a hint of annoyance and then continued before he had a chance to respond. "Why wouldn't I be nervous? Don't tell me it's always been some weird life goal of yours to go on an away mission to a pandemic-infested planet."

Xavier nodded in understanding. "Initial sensor readings suggests that this pandemic is only harmful to Cardassians, so unless you have a secret you're keeping, I think you'll be fine. And I would know if you did," he added as he tapped his temple and chuckled, trying his best to put Finn at ease.

"You're probably right," Finn forced a slight smile and shrugged. Being infected was only a minor worry, what put her on edge more was the idea of being surrounded by infected, sick, people. She loathed being sick or around people that were, it made her feel weak and she hated that. But that wasn't a topic she wanted to approach with anyone else.

It wasn't long before they reached the planet and made their descent. When they finally landed, Finn pushed back from her seat and looked at the ops officer as she grabbed her engineering kit. "You weren't lying when you said it's been a while since you logged any piloting hours. That much was obvious," she smirked.

The atmosphere had made for a slightly bumpy ride and Finn knew that none of the turbulence was his fault, but it was an excellent excuse to give him a hard time.

'You're not wrong" Douglas chimed in from the back. "Nearly pebble-dashed the bulkhead with breakfast!"

Xavier laughed. "My dad used to say, any landing that you can walk away from is one that was good enough. In fact, now that I think about it, the engines do feel a bit sluggish, maybe your team could do their job once in a while," he quipped back. He powered down the shuttle and put the systems into sleep mode, the last thing they wanted was someone stealing one of their shuttles. He got up and picked up one of the engineering kits and a phaser, stowing the latter in its holster on his hip.

"Ready to save some mining equipment from ultimate doom?" Xavier asked.

"Oh yea, I aced the 'saving mining equipment from ultimate doom' course at the academy," Finn chuckled as they exited the shuttle. "Didn't that Cardassian mining engineer say he'd meet us by the shuttle pad?" She asked noting the seemingly abandoned mining equipment. "Let's just head towards the rig, maybe we'll find him along the way. If not, we can at least start getting some scans of everything."

"Just before you two go off rescuing distressed sonic drills" Douglas interrupted. "Just a quick reminder of basic Away Team security ok? "

She waved her hand at them "Don't worry I won't nag! Just try and stay together, at least in visual range. If you do need to split up one of us will come with each of you. If there is a situation we don't like, we will tell you and we can discuss options. If it's something we really don't like and we decide that it's time to go, we expect you to accept that. Otherwise, we'll just loiter around and try to keep out of your way. Ok?"

"Fair enough, I don't like people telling me how to do my job either," Finn smiled and continued to walk towards the mining equipment. "By the way, Douglas, I heard that you're into surfing? We should catch a wave together on the holodeck sometime when we're done vacationing on this delightful planet." She gestured around to the clearly unappealing scenery with a chuckle.

Xavier rolled his eyes, what was it with security officers thinking they outranked everyone, when they clearly didn't. He was hoping that Finn would give the woman whatfore but when that didn't happen he decided that he was to play bad officer then. "Thank you for away team guidance one-oh-one, but we have done this a few times, we know the drill."

"Good to hear Lieutenant" Douglas replied with a smile and not rising to the bait.

Before anyone could say anything else they were joined by a Cardassian man in a typical military uniform. He was tall and slender, and shuffled over as though he was drawn to the group by a magnetic field. "I'm... erm... assuming that you are the Starfleet humans...erm who... erm, you're here to help, yes?" He stammered, keeping his eyes fixed on the female with the blonde hair.

Xavier found himself involuntarily taking a step back away from the person who had just appeared as though he had transported down. He almost fell over some equipment that had been lying on the floor, but quickly corrected himself before he embarrassed himself anymore. The Cardassian was not like one he had met before, he seemed extremely nervous, unable to look anyone in the eyes, but he seemed fixated with Finn, like most men were, Xavier thought to himself. He waited for her to do the introductions, Xavier wasn't sure if the Cardassian would listen to anyone else anyway.

Finn raised a wary eyebrow at the highly strung Cardassian. "That's us. I'm Lt.Keating, this is Lt.Leiko and Chief Douglas," she forced a smile as she pointed to each of them. Typically she'd have presented her hand for a shake but considering the pandemic and the Cardassian's odd behavior, her hand stayed placed by her side.

"We were told that you needed help securing some mining equipment?" She posed the open-ended question and waited to see how much detail she would receive in reply.

Douglas and Jackson stepped away a little, just to give some distance and both had a quick look around for any other Cardassians in the area.

"Keating..." the Cardassian repeated in a dreamlike way. "Yes, yes..erm.. mining come, come Starfleet," and without another word the man turned on his heel and started walking back in the direction he had come from.

Xavier gave the others a cautious look and then followed the strange man. "What is actually wrong with the mining equipment? Mister...?" He asked as he struggled to keep up with the Cardassian's pace and the unorganised landing bay.

"Aamar, Aamar Tule," the Cardassian eventually answered in an exasperated tone as though he would rather be talking to anyone but the young Betazoid. "Erm... it is broken. It doesn't... not working. You see..."


[Mine Control Room]

Xavier rolled his eyes and guessed that they would see for themselves then. Within a moment or two they entered an area which was set up with some command looking consoles. Different alerts and alarms seemed to be blaring from the brown workstations and they didn't seem to be manned. Xavier turned to Finn, "I think we need to investigate further." He knew he wasn't going to get any more sense out of the Cardassian, so why bother?

Douglas and Jackson followed along. Jackson stayed by the door, Douglas moved off to the other side of the control room.

Finn looked around almost in shock. How could a whole group just leave malfunctioning equipment like this, with all of these alarms going off?

"Why is no one here?" She asked, not expecting a very in-depth answer.

"Oh, uhm, left. Just before...before you...erm, arrived." He fumbled through a response.

"Well," Finn sighed, "I think we can handle it for now. Would you mind grabbing one of your standard engineering kits for me? I saw one a little ways back," she asked the Cardassian, using a smile to hide the suspicions she held inside.

Once Aamar was out of sight, Finn looked at Xavier. "Let's get the main systems shut down so we don't have to listen to these alarms and then we'll do some investigation and see if we can figure out what happened. Something here doesn't add up, which I'm sure you've picked up on yourself. Did you sense anything in particular from the jumpy lizard?" She asked, referring to their new Cardassian friend.

Xavier shook his head. "No, this entire area is just a fuzz, like static. I can feel emotional spikes, but nothing consistent." He wanted to add that it felt quite nice to be 'switched off' for a while, like getting home from work and kicking off your work boots, it was almost freeing. He didn't always enjoy being without his senses, but so much had happened recently, it was nice to hear his own thoughts.

Douglas was starting to not like the way this was all going down.

What kind of Mining Engineer was incapable of providing a reasonable explanation of why their own equipment was malfunctioning?

Saying ~" it's broken and it's not working" ~ was not exactly a technical description of the problem...

And where was everyone else? Why was the place deserted?

She caught Jackson's eye and flicked her look down to her own holster, then casually placed her hand down on the butt of her phaser and eased it in the holster, while still standing casually.

Then she went back to watching the room. Something just did not add up here ...

Jackson got the unspoken message loud and clear, moving his own hand to be near his weapon, he moved to where his back was near a wall and likewise kept his eyes moving looking for potential threats.

Xavier made his way over to the panel that was closest to him, as he did so he looked at the security officer he had talked to earlier. "Can you run some scans, see if we can find any of the workers please?"

"Yeah I can do that" Douglas nodded, she pulled a security tri-corder and began searching for other lifesigns.

Xavier looked at the workstation and tried to make heads and tails of what he was looking at. It seemed to be some kind of pressure readout, which in a mining centre, made a lot of sense. What didn't make sense was what the computer was telling him. The pressure readings were way too high, he was no expert in mining operations but the fact that everything was flashing red, was all the evidence he needed. But, if that wasn't bad enough, the power readings were way too low, there was no way this facility could be powered by the scraps that were being fed to the main reactor. The environmental systems seemed to be spiking too and for some reason they had been running some kind of atmospheric balance test, which was causing another set of problems. "Finn are you seeing this?" He asked the chief engineer. "What do you make of all this?"

"For one thing, this isn't an accident. There's no way that all of these systems failed at one time," Finn replied as she punched in commands on the console allowing the pressure release valves to open. "It looks like they rigged the whole thing to blow, though why they'd want to do that I'm not sure." She kept an eye on the readings and watched as the pressure slowly decreased. "And I say rigged because it's a simple fix. There are pressure release valves throughout the system that keep this sort of thing from happening, but no one even tried to open them."

The majority of the pressure warnings moved out of emergency status and into cautionary status, but one red light remained. "There's one valve that's stuck. It should be down that tunnel." Finn pointed to the right down a dark, damp, narrow passageway lit only by the flashing of red. "The plasma tank down there sits directly under the medical facility and it's a pretty isolated line which means the pressure release from the other areas isn't really going to provide much help. We'd better get down there and get it opened." Without waiting for an answer, Finn threw an engineering kit over her shoulder and ran towards the ominous tunnel.

"You," Xavier said pointing to Jackson. "Go with the Lieutenant, I need to work out what's happening here."

Jackson glanced at Douglas. She gave him a nod and he jogged off after Keating.

Xavier studied the power charts and true to Keating's word, the pressure had fallen drastically. She was right, whatever had happened here was no accident. Places like this had hundred of safety protocols that stopped things like this from happening, and even on the off chance that they failed, this was supposed to be a manned facility, so where the hell was everyone? "Any luck finding the workers?" He asked the officer with the tricorder.

Douglas shook her head. "No other lifesigns but us, but there is some strong radiation sources around here that are making the readings unclear."
She pointed the tricorder in different directions and adjusted the controls. "Nope, just not getting good readings to locate anyone more than maybe ten fifteen meters away"

The biggest mystery that Xavier couldn't solve was were all the power was coming from? The plasma tank that Finn had mentioned wasn't supplying it and from what he could tell, nothing here should be on right now, nevermind looking at the readings he was witnessing. He attempted to work the problem out in his head but when that didn't work he decided on a different tact. He pulled up the station schematic and overlaid the energy movements from the very console he was using and traced it back to its powersource. Still nothing. Maybe the answer was in the environmental controls? Xavier couldn't see how it possibly would be but that was the only unexplained anomaly. Overlaying the environmental systems on the schematic showed him, at the very least, where the problem were originating from; miles beneath them, under the ground, under the entire facility. "They're tapping into the core," Xavier said out loud to himself. "But why?" His eyes grew wide as he smashed his hand against his chest, "Finn, don't release that valve!"

Her finger hovered only an inch above the console as she heard the call from Xavier over the combadge. Could it be a trick? She wondered, thinking back to how oddly the Cardassian had behaved earlier. Perhaps he had taken them hostage and he actually wanted the plasma tank to blow.

"Why?" Finn chirped back to her coworker over the com.

"For some reason they're tapping into the planet core," Xavier said hurriedly. "It's clumsy and clearly been tampered with. If you release the valve, this entire area will be flooded with radiation, I need to work out what they're doing first."

"Well work fast, this tank is going to blow in the next ten minutes," she replied earnestly. "You don't think they purposely funneled the extra pressure to this tank with an intention of taking out the medical facility do you?" Finn wondered out loud. It was the only explanation she could think of offhand as to why they hadn't run into any other Cardassians and as to why they hadn't even attempted to get the situation under control.

"No pressure," Xavier grumbled. Right he had to think this through. This place was a simple mining facility with zero staff and only one Cardassian who seemed to have disappeared, along with everyone else. They sealed all of the valves which was causing catastrophic pressure in the reaction systems, opening the valves released the pressure, reducing the risk of an explosion. The one valve near the reaction has been sealed shut and they are pumping energy from the planet's core directly into the place, creating a build up of radiation. Think. "The only thing I can think of is to stop the feed from the core to the power systems," Xavier said as his fingers flew over the controls. "I will then use the environmental systems to eradicate the radiation build up, but I don't know if it'll be enough time. There might still be too much radiation around, this facility might be doomed, either way."

"Do it! I'd rather get some radiation than blow up. Who knows, maybe we'll get some super powers or start to glow in the dark," Finn replied with a grim chuckle, finger still hovering over the release button on the control panel.

Xavier wiped the sweat from his brow. This planet, already quite hot and muggy, felt like it was getting hotter every second, though that could be the radiation. "Finn, I've done all I can, we can't wait any longer to release that final valve. Either it worked or we have about 20 minutes before this place goes boom."

"Boom is not a preferred option" Douglas commented from the far side of the room where she was still bent over the tircorder. "And Ive got something!"

She had the device facing one of the thick concrete walls of the control room and moved slowly to the left. "Got about twenty plus life signs somewhere the other side of this wall!"

Douglas moved further left into the shadows behind a bank of equipment. "There's a door here" She celled out.

She returned the tricorder to her belt and pulled the phaser from her holster. The door opened to her touch, beyond was a dank, dimly lit corridor, with several doors leading off on each side. She tried the the first on the left, it was locked, the next one opened though. What was inside was not pleasant. The first indication was the stench of sickness and decay, it rolled out of the door in a putrid wave, causing Douglas to cough and gag.

She turned away to catch her breath and hold it. Looking back she stepped gingerly through the door, phaser leveled. The door opened on to what appeared to be some kind of dormitory or bunkroom, equally as dim as the corridor. There were a couple of tables with chairs and tables, near what looked like a food replicator. Beyond that were rows of three-bed bunks, they stretched back into the dim shadows. Many were occupied by prostrate figures. The room stank of vomit, feces, urine and death.

Douglas pulled a flashlight from her belt, she activated it and shone the beam around the room. The bunks were full of small, thin, humanoid figures. ~ Clearly not Cardassians, so they had to be the indigenous Metis ~ she reasoned. They were dressed in a variety of coveralls; ~Mine workers? ~ she wondered.

Some reacted to the beam of light, raising a hand or trying to sit up. There were several that did not move she noticed. Those that were moving looked sick, with pale wan completions, many were soaked in sweat, several covered in their own vomit. One who tried to rise began a series of rasping, hacking coughs that ended with them flopping back on to the bunk gasping for breath.

Douglas had seen enough and she backed up towards the door. She stumbled on something and looked down, there were boxes of what looked to be Cardassian medical supplies scattered around, including bottles of pills, some were open and the pills spilled on the grimy floor.

The realization came into her mind ~The entire group must be infected with the virus! And damn I just got a lung full of it too!~

She backed out and closed the door. These people appeared to have been abandoned by the mine's operators and left to fend for themselves, several had clearly already died, the rest looked like they would not last much longer without medical attention.

She jogged back to the control room. "Whatever you're going to do to fix things, do it quick! We've got a group of sick and dying Metis workers back there. Looks like they’ve caught the virus and have been abandoned, they need some urgent medical care or the rest won’t last long.

Oh and I probably got a lung full of the stuff too. So I’m gonna stay away from you guys” She finished with a grim smile.

Finn had already released the valve on the final pressure point and she and Jackson arrived in the control room just in time to hear Douglass's warning.

"Well, we didn't 'go boom' as Xavier so eloquently put it, when that final valve was released. But I have a feeling we've already hit our radiation exposure limit for the day," Finn said as nausea had started to set in and sweat streamed down her face. "I don't think the environmental systems are able to keep up with the radiation offload from the system. Douglas, can you and Jackson start evacuating the miners? Xavier and I can try to vent the radiation faster or enhance the signal to beam them out."

'Damn, this whole thing just got way more complicated' Xavier thought to himself as he went over to the other side of the command centre. He opened a locker that was right near the lift that headed down into one of the lower ore collection rooms. If he was correct he should find... "Bingo!" He said a grin on his face. Cardassians were nothing, if not paranoid. The locker had 3 EV suits in there, he took out two and handed one to Jackson and placed the other one on the floor a little away from Douglas. "Put these on. Anyone who can walk, get them out of here, the further the better."

Xavier headed back to the control panel and shook his head in Finn's direction. "Main power is offline, all backups are being pumped into the environmental systems. If we can seal off this room, make it independent from the rest of the facility, we should be able to direct the radiation away, long enough to be able to get a transporter lock. Let's just hope that Teyo has finished cleaning the system," he added with a slight grin. "Finn, seal those doors," he said pointing to the ones behind her, "I'll activate the blast shutters. We need to be quick." He added as he felt a wave of sickness coming over him.

"Those workers are not going anywhere under their own power" Douglas said "From what I saw they can't even get out of bed!. If we are moving them, then they will need to be transported"

"Then carry them or get out yourselves," Finn shouted as she ran towards the doors behind them. "There's no sense in all of us being irradiated down here and we don't know for sure that we'll get enough of a signal to beam anyone out." She pushed the sequence to seal the doors, but nothing happened. "Dammit, the controls are frozen!" The wall then took a hard blow from her fist, which was apparently all the doors needed to jolt into action.

"The doors will take a minute to fully seal, how long until the blast doors come down?" She asked her coworker, knowing that this whole situation had gotten extremely messy.

"Give me a second," Xavier grunted as he fought with the manual override and the overwhelming urge to be sick.

"There's more than twenty of them, there's no time to carry them all out even if we could, the risk of infection is too great" Douglas replied, well knowing the first rule of rescue was to ensure the safety of the rescuers. "We need to transport them!"

After a couple of minutes Xavier was able to get the blast shutters closed, he looked over to Finn who also had completed her task of sealing the doors, the area was as isolated as it was going to be. He rushed back to the main control panel and redirected the environmental systems to their location, flooding the rest of the facility with harmful radiation, but that couldn't be helped right now. He watched as the radiation levels were as low as they were going to get, considering the lack of power feeding in. "Douglas, contact the ship, let's get the hell out of here."

Douglas tapped her commbadge =^= Douglas to Athena! I'm going to need an emergency beam out of a group of Metis!"

She looked over to Keating, "How far away do they need to be?"

"Fifty meters ought to do it."

Douglas nodded "Ok back on the surface by the shuttle should be far enough"

Her commbadge chirped =^= Chief, we are going to need a transporter lock on those people to move them. We've got the four of you but other lifesigns are not clear =^=

=^= Copy that, get and lock on me and track me, I'm going to go and stand in the middle of them =^=
She turned to Jackson "You stay here, I'm probably infected, no point more of us risking it"

The Security Officer nodded and moved to assist Keating and Leiko if needed.

Douglas went back through the tunnel and into the dormitory. She gritted her teeth, tried not to gag on the stench and moved into the center of the bunk-room. "Hold on people, we're going to get you out of here"

She tapped her commbadge =^=Focus on me and lock on to every lifesign within this room, move us up to the surface and out by the shuttle=^=

=^= Standby Chief. Okay we're getting locks.... twenty three.... twenty four... twenty six.. twenty six total! Transporting now! =^=

The familiar shimmer appeared around Douglas, spreading outwards until the entire dormitory was enveloped in the beam, then she and Metis workers vanished.

Xavier looked at the readings and saw that the entire group had been evacuated, Douglas minus her EV suit. The room they were in was getting warmer and the radiation levels were starting to spike again. "There's nothing more we can do here now," he said to the remaining two people. "When the power fails we're all going to get an unhealthy dose of radiation poisoning, and I know how how sickness offends the Chief," he added giving her a grin. "We can come back later to sort this mess out. Right now let's join the others."

To be continued....