Lt. Cmdr. Josh Herrick: Casting the Net
Mark P
OOC: Removed DeVeau tags with the OOC swap that happened.
((Bridge, USS Thor))
For the first time, Josh was in command of a starship without his CO in the system. What was to be a routine survey was now a mystery the team needed to solve, and he prayed for a quick and satisfactory resolution.
His eyes scanned the bridge, glancing between the ‘mini wings’ of stations and landing on the viewscreen. They had broken orbit, now beginning a standard sweep of the system.
Herrick: What do we know about this system thus far?
As the J’naii officer tapped their controls, the starscape shifted.
Meris: (tapping the panel) Commander, according to the navigational sensors, the Vexilon system contains twenty particles of space dust per cubic meter. We’ve detected fifty-two ultraviolet radiation spikes and a class two comet... if that’s the kind of thing you had in mind.
Was it?
Dust… a comet… those weren’t necessarily alarm worthy. Josh parked the spikes for now, turning to the engineer in case there was anything further.
Ral: Response.
Herrick: Is any other location here capable of sustaining life? Class K is certainly pushing it for that to be the ideal “setting down” place.
Meris: Setting down, sir? We are tangle-adjacent here. The away teams have gone down to VX-LON-3 on the fringe of the tangle. There are three other planetoids within the system. VX-LON-1 and VX-LON-2 are both Class P and incapable of supporting life as we know it. They are both positioned outside the tangle. VX-LON-4 is Class E and capable of supporting carbon-based life but is fully within the tangle. Fun fact… VX-LON-4 has the highest surface temperature of any known planet within the tangle.
While it wasn’t what the first officer had been getting at -- particularly given the Thor’s last (crash) landing -- it resulted in a rich tapestry of data. Points of interest were starting to accumulate, and the list was continuing to grow.
Ral: Response.
Meris: Shall I start our survey around any particular point of interest?
This was it. It was time to make a decision… and he was self-aware enough to identify that he was feeling a touch of imposter syndrome. Yes, he had command training. Yes, he’d led away teams and temporarily commanded a starship. But now he felt alone, despite the several hundred souls onboard with him.
Ral: Response.
Herrick: Right. Meris, let’s start with doing a close pass of the radiation spikes. Let’s start with getting high-resolution sensor data on the UV spikes.
Were they all from the sun, perhaps in a more intense solar period, or from another source?
Herrick: Wyatt, I’d like to get several probes ready for our other phenomena. There’s no reason we can’t cast the net a bit wide on this one and see what bites… ::correcting himself:: see what data we can gather and collate.
Ral/Meris: Response
As the ship continued forward to its destination, the comet came onto the viewscreen on a perpendicular path. A brilliant blue tail trailing behind it. He held back from prompting another update. He wasn’t here to mother the officers, they’d share if something newsworthy came up.
In the far, far distance, almost like a smudge on the screen, was the telltale red of The Tangle.
Ral/Meris: Response
They’d arrived at one of the sources of the UV spikes, though the commander wouldn’t have known it, given there was nothing of note on the viewscreen. Not being visible didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Herrick: Is there still radiation emanating from this location?
Ral/Meris: Response