Mission Archive

"Grateful"
(Previous post - "Deep Trouble")

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"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."

-Cicero

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Location: Moon of PI ALPHA III
Setting: Underground cave system
Stardate: 30148.1345

**Cold. Hard. Damp. Cold.**

Those were the sensations that pressed through to Eve’s mind as she slowly regained consciousness. Her thoughts were jumbled. At first she thought she was in her quarters on the ANUBIS. Then she remembered their mission objectives regarding the journey on the moon of PI ALPHA III. But she didn’t remember getting knocked out. And she sure as hell didn’t know where she was now.

She opened her eyes. It took some time for them to focus and adjust to the gentle light being cast by more crystalline parts of the stone walls of a cell… a rough hewn cell akin to some kind of prison. She sat up, disoriented, rubbing her teeth against her bottom lip as to somehow alleviate the physical malaise of her arrival there. Shadows were cast across her form by stone bars which served as the front of the cell. She saw others across the way to her left and to her right. Her mood improved when she realized they were Stark and Mizore.

“Sleeping beauty’s awake,” the Ops officer said,  which elicited a noise from Eve somewhere between a groan and a chuckle.

“Everyone’s here?” she called out. Erik Morningstar’s voice answered reassuringly.

“Yes, we are all accounted for, Counsellor… but a bit of a captive audience as it were.”

“I would strongly suggest you not come into contact with the bars in any way, shape, or form,” Maya said from somewhere a little closer than Morningstar. “They are imbued with a bio-electrical energy which can be extremely painful if touched.”

“I will take that under advisement,” Eve mused, trying to figure out exactly what happened. She thought she remembered losing track of Doctor Mizore, but wasn’t even sure of that. “Are you alright?” she asked the aCMO.

“Yes. Somehow my arm has been healed,” she added, holding up the once wrapped appendage.

“Curious- why would a captor heal us and then imprison us?” That demonstrated some sort of civilization on their part, to take the time to tend to the wounded and yet still regard them as someone to be segregated from. Were they unknowingly interfering with the beings’ own plans, or did they simply not want witnesses?

“I think we’ve all been asking that question,”  the CO added.

Instinctively, she tapped her comm badge and found it unresponsive. She silently questioned her judgement, as if most of the others were already awake, they too would have tried to reach the ship already. “Any thought to what could be blocking communications?”

“There are at least five main scenarios that could cause this,” Maya began, “but it’s impossible to speculate further without diagnostic equipment,” the Shillian Science officer added with a twinge of disappointment.

Eve sighed, laying back down in the cold hard floor, hands behind her head for support, examining the bars for any way to tamper with or disable them. There were too many unanswered questions. How long had they been here? Why were they abducted? What had they stumbled upon?

And, most importantly, how were they going to escape?

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Lieutenant JG Eve Dalziel

Counsellor