Setting Up Base

Posted on 19 Mar 2021 @ 9:12pm by Lieutenant Commander Camila Di Pasquale

447 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Extinction
Location: The Planet
Timeline: Mission Day 21 at 1400

Camila looked around the area of the Citarum and tried to decide which area would be the least defensible and which would be the most defensible. Then she decided it didn't really matter because everything on the planet with the exception of vegetation had been dead for at least a hundred years according to the tricorder readings.

What bothered her what the fact that none of them had been able to detect a cause of death in anyone. They had all just...died. Where they sat, stood, walked and slept. There hadn't been a single sign of struggle anywhere. Couples, single individuals, families. All dead. If it was a biological attack, whatever did it was long gone. The planet hadn't been stripped of resources, the cities hadn't been bombed and the..she realized she was chasing herself in circles.

"I hate this place," the Security Chief muttered as she took several sets of readings with her tricorder, then went back to the runabout to get the sensors set up for any movement, excessive radiation, weather patterns, seismic activity, unnatural patterns in the vegetation and everything else she could think of. When she got that set up, she headed back to talk to the drone pilot.

"I really wish we had brought more drones, but you're our only drone pilot here," Camila told the young man. "I want you to set up a four points patrol around the Citarum at its highest altitude and scanning on aggressive and active. Set the radius out to three kilometers and if you pick up anything, contact me immediately."

"Yes, Chief," he said and set up the drone with the parameters she had requested and launched the drone. With that taken care of, she headed back to get a Type III phaser rifle and a spare power cell.

Roughly fifty feet from the shuttle, she began to excavate a series of something called fox holes she had read about in the computer for primeval warfare techniques. She made each one four feet deep and wide, then moved on to the next one twenty feet away. When she finished, there were six holes around the runabout and she began to chop vegetation down to cover the holes with, even though she felt foolish since no one was likely to stumble into the camp and less likely to fall into a hole. Still, there wasn't much more she could do to defend against something she couldn't see.

An hour later, Camila headed back into the runabout, gave a nod to the drone pilot, then headed to get a bite from the replicator and waited for the others to come down.

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