LtCmdr Jovenan – Shelter, check. Water, check. Food, for now. Safety, uh…
Jovenan
((Inside the cliffs, Callis I))
Bones. It’s rarely a good thing to find bones. In matter of fact, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario where you might want to find bones – as an archaeologist, sure, or as a doctor doing a surgery on someone, but hardly anyone else would want to find bones. Not where they didn’t expect to find them. And a set of bones, even if dry and old, just lying in the middle of a tunnel near where they had planned to set camp to, quite freaked out the already disturbed Jovenan. Luckily she wasn’t alone, although it was rather embarrassing to have an ops officer convince the scientist to do, you know, science.
Jovenan: Can you tell anything about what kind of animal it was?
K’Wara: ::shaky chuckle:: I picked geology, remember? ::focuses:: Judging from the size of the bones, it wasn’t small, at least, but anything beyond that…
Not small. Not enormous, Jovenan could see that too. About the size of a humanoid seemed correct, similar to her or the Lieutenant or their fellow survivors. Curiosity was returning to Jovenan. She abandoned her post as a lookout – a futile post at that, since she didn’t have anything to defend them if need be – and stepped closer to the skeleton. The Lieutenant shifted aside a little to give her space, and she placed her chemlight down so that her hands were free to examine the remains. Now, she wasn’t actually an expert in forensic sciences, but she had taken extensive biology courses in the Academy. Doctor Bancroft might have been more able to provide a more detailed analysis of the bones, but Jovenan didn’t think that much was required at all – and not even he would have been able to do something to help this poor fellow.
The examination was rather difficult. There wasn’t all that much of the skeleton still fully intact. Just as the Lieutenant had said, someone or something had likely been eating on the animal and made sure nothing remained of the flesh. The skull was shattered, either by age, coincidence or by being smashed in. Other bones were cut too, and some of them were clearly moved around, making it difficult to say without proper and lengthy study what kind of creature the skeleton had belonged to. Jovenan found the hip bone eventually, in just two large pieces. She lifted the two parts and combined them.
Oh. Uh…
She felt the curiosity drain from her as the anxiety pulsated back into her body with her heartbeat.
Jovenan: Uh, whatever it was, it was bipedal.
K’Wara: ::tense smile:: Guess the next step on our list is to find out what our elusive artisté's species looked like…
True. She supposed. Placing the bones back where they were – did she desecrate a grave? oh that’s not good, that’s not at all how to treat the remains of a person – she had to remind herself that they knew nothing about the people who made the drawings. This may not be them, this may just be some sort of humanoid-sized, bipedal, non-intelligent game animal they hunted. There were plenty of animals in like that in the galaxy, right? Earth had its apes and monkeys, but humans didn’t eat them, so it didn’t really apply, although it would make sense that there may have been cultures that did eat them or people who hunted apes when they were starving otherwise, it made Jovenan sick to think that people did that, but she didn’t like to think about slaughtering and eating animals at all, she was typically a vegetarian after all and the small amount of meet she had ever eaten was replicated, but if they didn’t find plentiful edible plants and the rescue took time, they might be forced to hunt, and then there were chickens, humans ate a ton of chickens before replicators, like enormous amounts, they were bipedal, although much smaller, but if there were giants chickens then maybe…
Breathe.
Jovenan: Right. Um. Right. ::pause:: This discovery doesn’t really make me feel too secure about staying near these tunnels. Whatever kind of… animal this was, something killed it, and the predators might still be living in these tunnels. But, there probably aren’t any safer places in the caves ::looks at K’Wara:: Don’t you think?
K’Wara: I don’t think it’d be too dangerous, no. We’ve seen no indication that whatever did this currently lives in the caves, but we also can’t completely deny the possibility. ::looks back to Jovenan:: But we need to rest, and that waterfall is the most suitable place we’ve seen ever since crawling out of the pod.
There was little Jovenan could do to argue against that assessment. They had finally found water, and by the signs, the earlier residents of the tunnels had chosen to stay in the cavern as well. If it weren’t for the possibility of the predators, it would be almost a perfect spot from the survival standpoint. Jovenan took a deep breath. The earlier residents had apparently survived there for a while. They’d be able to do so for a night, and for all they knew, they might find a better spot or something to defend themselves with in the morning. Her brain wasn’t working at full efficiency with the exhaustion, thirst, hunger, the shock of surviving a crashlanding, the constant fear of darkness, and the suppressed thought of having lost Vitor and everyone she cared about pressing onto her.
Jovenan: I have to agree. This might be the best we can do for now, but it would be careless to let down our guard. Someone need to keep an eye open while the others sleep.
K’Wara: Definitely a guard rotation. ::considers:: Maybe set up an alarm system, if we can find some primitive way of... ::looks down at the bones:: I have an idea. But I don’t think you’re going to like it. If we have the tools for it, we could make some tripwire alarms out of the bones. Give us an early warning in case something walks through?
Jovenan wrinkled her nose. They were right, she didn’t like the idea. Although Jovenan didn’t believe in the spirits of the dead – the spirit of this creature would have likely faded into the nature anyway according to the beliefs of her people – she didn’t know if it and its people did, if it indeed turned out to have been an intelligent individual. It was difficult to measure respecting other people and cultures against the needs of survival. Was it all that bad to use a few old bones so that there wouldn’t have been four new piles to accompany them?
Jovenan: That’s an option. Let’s get back to the others and tell them about what we’ve found. Maybe they’ve made progress too. And, if we don’t have other ideas, we’ll ::sigh:: we’ll use the remains as a tripwire. Okay?
K’Wara: Yes Sir.
They stood up and left the skeletal remains to peace for now. Stepping back into the cavern, the roar of the waterfall grew back to the same intensity, covering all other sounds. It made Jovenan question if the tripwire plan would work at all; they wouldn’t be able to hear the bones clatter at all. Maybe if they attached it to a longer wire that lead to the campsite, so that they’d notice if it moved… Too complicated, and she wasn’t sure if they even had that much wire with them. They’d need to do the same thing to all tunnels leading there, after all. It would have been so much easier with phasers, just collapse a part of the tunnel or don’t bother even with that, just sit by the campfire with a weapon at hand, ready to shoot anything that moves.
Returning to where they had left the two JayGees, Jovenan and Lt K’Wara were faced with a pleasant surprise: against all their previous doubts, there was a nice campfire rustling. Jovenan wasn’t sure exactly how they had managed that without firewood or firestarters, or how the Doctor had allowed that after his concerns of the lack of air current, but in the end, she was just eager to get to sit by the flames.
K’Wara: A fire? Crackin’! ::looks at the two of them:: That’ll make things easier.
Bergmen: Yeah, just... (beat) I would wait a while before you roast anything on it, until the chemical accelerants burn out. Give it half, a hour max. ::smiles innocently::
Oh, that’s how they did it. They were one chemlight short now, right? Hopefully they’d be able to keep the fire alive, or they might need to go looking for another place to find shelter in, because Jovenan for sure wouldn’t remain in the caves without a single source of light.
Jovenan: A little chemical poisoning would give the rations some taste, though. ::pause:: Did you have any issues?
Bancroft/K’Wara: Response
Bergmen: Did you find anything interesting in the tunnels, ma'am? Is there a way out?
Jovenan thought for a moment what to say. It wouldn’t do good for the team morale if she told them out right that there might be humanoid-eating creatures lurking around these tunnels, and that they might be next. She hadn’t forgotten that Lt Bergmen had to be talked down from brandishing his hatchet. That said, she couldn’t lie to her team either. They had the right to know.
Jovenan: No exit, at least not immediately, but we found something… else. Some bones. Dry, maybe very old. We’ll need to have a closer look later, but there is a small possibility they belonged to the people who made these drawings. No other signs of animals, but there might be some, so when we go to sleep, we’ll need to have someone take watch, and maybe set up an alarm system.
Bancroft/K’Wara: Response
Bergmen: So, I've checked our rations, and we should be good for some time if we ration them a bit. With water and the ability to make a fire, we should be immediately out of trouble, ma’am. (beat) Sir.
That was good. Jovenan kneeled down by the campfire and warmed her hands by it. The heat licking her skin and radiating to her body felt pleasant. While the caves weren’t cold, they were definitely not too warm, and after a long time spent spelunking there, she didn’t want to leave from the fire. She hadn’t even realised how awfully tired she was.
Jovenan: Good. When the fire’s safe, we can warm our food and have a small bite. ::pause:: Anyone having ideas for the alarm system or other improvements? Lieutenant K’Wara suggested making a tripwire with the bones.
Bancroft/K’Wara/Bergmen: Response
Jovenan: ::smile:: Good thing I got stranded with all the smartest people. Do we have any cloth with us? We could try to close off one of the tunnels with it. Animals might not realise they can get through, and if they do, it’ll be easier to see and hear them tear through it.
Bancroft/K’Wara/Bergmen: Response
After a while, Jovenan pulled out a ration pack from her backpack. Tearing the pack open, she found that it contained… something. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but it was food, and knowing how Starfleet prepared for these kinds of events, it was certain to be nutritious. After heating the food a little, she took a bite. Her eyes wandered to the drawings on the walls.
Jovenan: Have you had a chance to look at the carvings? That over there looks like writing, but these figures are clearly drawings. Maybe they tell a scene?
Bancroft/K’Wara/Bergmen: Response
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Lieutenant Commander Jovenan
Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11