LtCmdr Jovenan – We have successfully recruited a spy among the goldshirts
Jovenan
((Archaeological Survey Site, Serein Basin, Rylor))
It had been fun volunteering, but now that both Jovenan and Cole had found artefacts and structures of the ancient civilisations of the colony world, the Chief Scientist was starting to feel like their usability was close to being exhausted. The hearth she had found likely contained microscopic evidence of the life the original dwellers lived: what they ate, how they cooked, what fuel they had, who were they. It was all valuable data for the archaeologists, but it was also very easy to destroy or contaminate. Jovenan, despite her education and experience as a planetary science, wasn’t in any way expert in this field, so she feared thwarting the hard work of the actual research personnel. Lt Tal didn’t seem to mind their presence, though, so maybe she could at least make an offer – the methods of archaeology and planetary science weren’t completely opposite, after all.
Jovenan: Can we help with taking the samples, or is it strictly for professionals only?
Cole: I’m happy to assist, as long as I’m not about to commit some archaeological crime by accident.
Cole seemed enthusiastic to help, stepping closer. Jovenan agreed. Although she would have personally loved to have helping hands on the field from the Artemis crew roster – and she sometimes had – she also had to acknowledge that in that regard, archaeology and planetary sciences, or most other studies conducted by the ship’s crew, were very different. There were plenty of rocks on a planet, but only one such lock or hearth, at least as far as they knew.
Tal: You can absolutely assist – supervised. ::slight smile:: I’ll show you how to collect without contaminating the layer. ::beat:: It’s less dramatic than excavation, but considerably more fun.
That was great to hear. They could still help and contribute to the discovery, reducing the required amount of work for the archaeology team – except for their supervisor, who not only had to keep watching them and presumably analyse what they had discovered later on. A little smirk reappeared to Jovenan’s lips.
Jovenan: Sorry we keep getting adding to your workload. If we keep doing this, I fear we might take all your free evenings for a while.
Tal: ::smiling:: You’re not adding to it – you’re improving it. ::matter-of-fact:: In any case, most days are far slower than this.
The Lieutenant turned towards Cole.
Tal: ::idly:: Most evenings, too.
Cole: I’m not hearing a downside yet.
Tal: ::light laugh:: That’s because we haven’t reached the part where you spend three hours cataloguing fragments that all turn out to be the same broken bowl. ::a faint smile:: It does build character, though.
Jovenan let out a similar light laughter as Lt Tal had. An archaeologist or not, she was more than familiar with the sentiment; every scientist could tell about the slow, tedious and repetitive but ultimately necessary part of their job, cataloguing, recording, transcribing or writing down something. To think of it, same could probably be said about a lot of professions, including security, where “nothing” happened on most days, she believed.
Jovenan: I wish we had more time here for that, but our shoreleave is not very long. Maybe another time.
Cole: If we keep coming back, can we negotiate better titles than “volunteer”?
Together with the Lieutenant’s, Jovenan’s eyebrow rose a little on her face. Was Cole eyeing for a spot in the footnotes of the paper Lt Tal’s team were going to publish? She didn’t know the security officer would be interested in such things.
Tal: ::loftily:: Titles are earned through sustained contribution over time. ::glancing between them, warmly:: Though at your current trajectory, I’d say you’re both on track for promotion to ‘provisionally useful’ by the end of the day.
Jovenan: I’ll take that! Given how quick our field education has been, “provisionally useful” is more than I could have wished for.
Cole: I suppose I could be persuaded to continue my field education.
Tal: ::offhand:: Then I suppose I could be persuaded to continue field-educating you. ::quickly:: Both of you, I mean.
Jovenan smiled and nodded. It was a kind offer, considering that there were other volunteers as well. The addition of “both of you” was an interesting one, though, causing her to shift eyes between the two. She wouldn’t have questioned her inclusion in the statement if the Lieutenant hadn’t said that. Cole had, as she had noticed, paid much attention to the archaeologist, exchanging frequent glances and tucking her hair when speaking to her, but the both hadn’t yet treated her as a third wheel. Perhaps she was reading too much into a simple statement. It wasn’t like she hadn’t misspoken or blabbered when nervous.
Cole: That sounds dangerously close to a good use of shore leave.
Jovenan: Agreed. Thank you for taking us!
Lt Tal gave them something of a smile before focusing back to the ground. While the archaeologist sketched the geometry of each individual discovery, Jovenan wondered how much luck they must have had to find them. A metre to the right, maybe they hadn’t found anything and the Lieutenant hadn’t paid much attention to them at all. Or maybe there were something much more interesting in there, something they didn’t and wouldn’t find with their full attention drawn to here.
Tal: All right. Working theory. ::her tone easing naturally from playful to precise:: We may not be looking at scattered debris at all. ::tipping her brush toward Cole’s square:: This gives us controlled access. Something that opened and closed, meant to be accessed by only the right people. ::tipping her brush toward the seam:: A built boundary – threshold, fitted stone, maybe the edge of a floor or doorway.
She pointed towards the spot where Jovenan had found the base of the hearth.
Tal: And here, repeated domestic or work use. Heat, occupation, and routine. ::eyeing Jovenan and Natasha:: Peer review time. Your thoughts?
Jovenan inhaled deep and looked around at the ground. It would have been easy to just make guesses and list possible explanations: home of someone who needed and could afford extra security, temple with a fireplace for burning offerings, guard house, etc. However, separating wild guesses from potential truths needed careful consideration, so she looked at the individual findings once more, rubbing her chin.
Cole: ::processing what info they had:: If the latch and seam belong to the same system, then we’re probably not looking at random domestic debris. We’re looking at a controlled space people used repeatedly. The hearth makes it feel less ceremonial and more practical, like something people actually worked around. Possibly domestic in nature.
Lifting both her eyebrows, Jovenan nodded along with the deduction. Cole continued to demonstrate her reading the scene.
Jovenan: That makes sense to me. In addition, the latch requires someone to open it from the inside. Either there was another entrance, or there was continuously someone inside. The hearth could be there to facilitate the liveable conditions.
Lt Tal continued thinking. It was a pleasure seeing how professionals worked in their craft, while Jovenan, no matter rank and position, could only make guesses and uneducated deductions. There was so much to learn, yet so little time to figure out everything.
Tal: I think that’s right. The next useful evidence probably won’t be dramatic. ::glancing between them:: We’d want to look for continuation of the seam, post settings, compacted flooring, maybe discoloration where repeated traffic or storage changed the soil chemistry. ::mock-conspiratorially:: Which is archaeologist for ‘you are both now officially authorized to get very excited about dirt.’
Cole: You make a surprisingly compelling case for dirt.
Jovenan laughed a little.
Jovenan: So this is what it requires to turn someone into geosciences. Hidden treasures!
Tal: Response
Cole: I’m not saying I’ve been converted. I’m just saying I understand the appeal a lot better than I did this morning.
Jovenan smiled widely. It was not her field, nor it was in any way her efforts that had caused it – it was all thanks to Lt Tal – but she was still proud that there was one more person who had found passion, no matter how major or life-changing, for sciences.
Jovenan: That counts as a victory for me. I almost feel like we should celebrate that… after we have taken soil samples for analysation.
Tal: Response
Cole: I could get used to this.
Crouching towards the ground, Jovenan poked the soil with her trowel. The ground was rather tightly packed there, mostly because of the weight of the layers that had got deposited over it, but perhaps partially because of the feet that had trembled upon it, be it theirs or the ancient dwellers. Was this once a street or a garden, or were they standing where the floor of the building would have been? She grasped for a handful of the soil and moved it around with the finger of her other hand before briefly turning towards the other blueshirt.
Jovenan: May I ask, what got you into archaeology? Did you also go volunteering somewhere and find your passion there?
Tal/Cole: Response
Jovenan: I get that. For me, it was the desire to see new worlds. Didn’t expect so many of them to try and kill us, but I’m still not regretting anything!
She smiled, but in her mind, she scolded herself for bringing up the topic. This was meant to be a fun trip, a distraction from the heavy thoughts that had followed her since the previous mission and – let’s not analyse further. Just focus on the soil and the archaeology and rocks and the two other people sharing the day with her.
Tal/Cole: Response
She ran loose dust through her fingers.
Jovenan: There seems to be a lot of charcoal in the soil. Maybe they burned something in here, or something got burned?
Tal/Cole: Response
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Lieutenant Commander Jovenan
Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11