Team Building Exercise 1

Posted on Mon Jul 1st, 2024 @ 9:26am by Commodore Phoenix Lalor-Richardson & Commander Kyle Reece & Lieutenant Commander Alicia Kelea-Salik & Lieutenant Thor Magnus & Consul Andrinn Orin

Mission: Season 6 HIATUS
Location: Edens Reach and Transporter Room 1
Timeline: MD6 - 08h00
1908 words - 3.8 OF Standard Post Measure

IC

Phoenix had four packs at her feet as the four senior staff officers she had summoned filed into the transporter room.

"Ah Alicia, Thor, Kyle, Andrinn. Good. Welcome." Her lips were smiling. "I figure while we have some downtime, it would be a good time to get you all involved in a bit of Team Building." She handed each officer a pack. "Food for the day water, tricorders, everything bar sleeping equipment because you will not be spending the night down there. I am going to beam you to a place on the planet, and the four of you are going to spend the day exploring, working together. And get to know each other." She waved them onto the transporter padd.

Making an approving face as he nodded in agreement with what he had heard, Kyle was the first one to take a pack and stepped up into the transporter chamber.

"I'm totally down. This is the first time that I've roughed it like this for a team building exercise in quite some time. So, I'm excited," Andrinn replied as he was the second one up onto the transporter pad, grabbing a pack of his own.

“I’d appreciate it if you could let Savar know that I’m off ship Commodore” Alicia smiled as she took her pack and stepped up onto the transporter pad. “He’ll need to collect Connor and N’vea for me later.”

"Shall do" Phoenix said with a smile. "And if he cannot, I will collect them with the twins and you can collect them when you get back."

Thor was glad that Lorelei would watch his children as he and Athena both participated in these team building exercises. “Not to worry for Athena and I. Lorelei is babysitting the children. Let’s go have a memorable time.”

"have fun all" Phoenix said softly as they gathered on the padd.

The four officers found themselves in a small clearing next to a crystal clear pool, which was being fed by a large waterfall. There was soft grass and moss growing on rocks around the pool, and then as they looked, birds flew between the trees, playing chase with the Fairy Dragons that were also there.

“Completely amazing!” Alicia smiled as she walked across to the water, dabbling her fingers in the crystal clear water. “It’s incredible.”

“It is,” Thor said as he looked at the others. “So what do we do? Do we build a campfire?”

"Not yet," Kyle replied. "Let's each of us pick a compass heading, and head a little bit into the woods, then start scanning the area? We could use this spot as the central hub to work out from."

Alicia nodded. “Sounds like a good idea to me, we’re supposed to be working as a team so let’s try to spend at least some time together as a group rather than solo.”

"We will be," Kyle replied politely. "I'd say let's do our scans for ten to twenty minutes, then, we can all compare readings, and agree on the next course of action?"

“Good idea,” Thor replied, “I will start in the western area.”

"Since we're scanning areas, I can scan the eastern area and see what it says. If that's okay with everyone else?" Andrinn replied as he grabbed for his tricorder and opened it up, scanning a bit of the eastern area for a moment.

Kyle looked over at Alicia and grinned. "Lady's choice. North or south?"

“I’ll go South” Alicia smiled as she readied her tricorder. “Let’s see what we find.”

Kyle nodded. "Then north's all mine," he replied with a grin.

Andrinn started scanning the eastern area of the encampment and started walking a little bit that way. He was curious to see what was out there on the planet, especially since it was a planet that was totally unexplored. But, it was still as beautiful as the moment that they all got there.

Thor was walking in the western area. Scanning around he found a couple of graves which according to the scanner were twenty-four years old. They were actually of pets it seemed like. “Pet cemetery over here.”

Kyle was a few dozen meters north of the beam-in site, and his tricorder gad started to detect the ruins of what may have once been a home. "I looks like there used to be a structure here," he stated over his commbadge, that he had activated to speak to the group. "From what I can see, it looks like it burned to the ground. My tricorder is carbon dating the remains to be about fifteen years ago." He looked up and around him, curious as to what happened to the individuals who had both lived here, and had buried their dead animals. "Andrinn? Alicia? Have you two found anything?"

Alicia was picking up something else. “I’ve got something over here, it looks like it might once have been an area used for growing native plants, maybe for food? I’m not detecting anything foreign amongst it though, just what’s native to this planet.”

Andrinn was just scanning away without much luck before literally stumbling over something sticking out of the ground. He let out an audible grunt when he hit the ground and rolled over. Andrinn dusted off his uniform and looked back to see what he had stumbled over. He noticed that it appeared to be the side of a marker of some sort. Andrinn got up and walked over to it, scanning it to run the wording through the translation matrix, which ended up taking a few moments longer than normal because of the complexity of the language.

Andrinn yelled out to the rest of the team, hoping that they were in range. He yelled out, "I think I've found a little marker of some sort!"

"Everyone," Kyle spoke aloud, "let's converge on Andrinn's location, and see what he found."

As Andrinn was waiting for everyone to converge onto his location, the tricorder finally translated the information that was on the marker. It was a road map for where some of the local attractions and other nearby cities were. Andrinn saw so much information had come from the marker and it was exciting to show off once everyone gathered around.

Alicia joined everyone curious to see what it was that had been found.

Alicia was one of the first people from the team that Andrinn saw and he managed to get to his feet really quickly when he saw her. Andrinn continued to scan the marker and noticed it was rather tall and some of it was buried beneath the ground and dirt. Andrinn looked over at Alicia and said, "I think I found what appeared to be a marker for directions. Both to nearby towns and for local directions. But, there's more here than meets the eye. More might be buried underneath the ground we're standing on."

Kyle stepped through the brush as the Chief Diplomat finished speaking. He adjusted his tricorder and scanned the marker. "You're right, Andrinn. According to my scans, this marker is actually the tip if a monolith, which looks to be nearly six meters tall, and a square meter wide." He looked up at Alicia and Andrinn as he added, "It must've taken hundreds, possible thousands of years of weathering, to bury this much."

Alicia gave Kyle a smile. “So this planet was possibly inhabited just like ours, only now nature has taken over again making it this unspoilt paradise.”

"I'm just wondering if whoever made this was an ancient civilization. Much like the Iconians or something similar in age? From what I can tell by just the preliminary scans, the language has roots in several more modern languages, including Trill, Bajoran, Vulcan, and more," Andrinn replied, trying to get the tricorder to reach further down with the scans. But, it was having some difficulty.

Kyle looked at Andrinn with a perplexed look on his face. Did you say that there are language roots that are similar to races from our galaxy? That's amazing!" He loomed at the marker, as he continued. "I wonder how they got here, long before our own societies were still forming?"

"Well, that's why I was thinking Iconian or the Progenitor races. They would have been around long before anyone else really would have had the technology to get out here. Maybe they were out this way?" Andrinn offered up, just as intrigued as everyone else was.

“Very curious,” Thor said, “Any of you take a class in archeology or had it as a hobby? Seems this is now an archeology expedition.”

Alicia stood offering a nod of her head. “That’ll be me” She offered a smile. “It’s a hobby that I don’t delve into that much these days, my Counselling duties always get priority.”

"Me too! Diplomatic duties require me to know the History of so many species, so I've decided to dive into a bit of archeology and anthropology a few years ago. Any ideas about what all this could mean?" Andrinn asked, curious to see what Alicia and the others thought.

Kyle was thoughtful for a moment, then offered, "Well, it could have several implications. One being, perhaps the universe, as we know it, is vastly older than we once believed. Also, that the older races that we know of...could in fact be young races themselves, compared to who may have come before them?"

Alicia nodded. “This opens up a whole host of questions, and a new mystery. It’s definitely the find of a lifetime.”

"Well, I think that we could take a sample of the material and bring it back to the ship to run some tests on it, to make sure that it's nothing too crazy. Maybe, then we can come back if we have the time to come back to do a more detailed dig to see what this thing truly looks like and means," Andrinn offered up, rummaging through his bag to get some sample beakers to get those samples.

“Well, let us have fun and do some archeology,” Thor said taking out his tricorder.

"Archeology is definitely a fun little endeavor," Andrinn replied with a small chuckle.

For the next several hours, the team worked diligently on the site, excavating several samples of soil, plant life, even various insects, both alive and dead. They also carefully dug away almost a meter of soil, to get a better look at the top of the obelisk. The took more detailed scans of its surface, then, as they were losing the light, they carefully reburied the obelisk, to continue protecting it from the weather.

Once everything was bagged up Kyle led them back to the beam in point. "Everyone ready?

"Yeah, I think so. There's more information here than I could have ever imagined. It has been fun to get out straight out of diplomacy and get into something I could do for fun for once," Andrinn replied with a smile across his face.

Once everyone said they were, he reached up and tapped his commbadge. "Reece to Elysium. Away team ready to beam up."

=/\=I have your signals, Commander Reece.=/\= the transporter chief's voice could be heard replying.

"Energize!" Kyle said aloud.

Within seconds, the team was gone, leaving the island in the peace that they had found it.

~OFF~