SCIENCE LAB 2
T-MINUS 58 MINUTES 56 SECONDSFor the last three days Inzjana and Inigo had been working on the distress call, pulling every trick out of the book to clear up the message as best they could, Inzjana had just arrived back from a much needed break for lunch and a rest, at the science petty officer's insistence and the last batch of filters and complex audio visual algorithms had just finished. Inzjana sat back at her console, while Inigo Montaña sat back at his.
Neither officers had seen the Chief Science Officer in three days but Inzjana concluded that he was no doubt busy with his own assigned tasks from the captain, or first officer.
It was then that two events happened simultaneously; the distress call had finished with the final set of filters and they received a subspace message from the probe that it had arrived at its destination. First thing was first though, so Inzjana played the message for the last time, for it wasn't clear enough now, it would never be, they had used the last trick in the bag.
"Computer, play distress call and record the telemetry from the probe," Inzjana ordered.
COMPUTER: "Acknowledged."
On the screen above both officers the message replayed, it was still quite fragmented but they could make out more words this time and a visual, meaning for the first time ever they actually had an image to fit the voice: "I-IF...ONE...THIS MESSAGE...WE REQUIRE ASSIST...GLOBAL WA...BROKE OUT BETWEE...CATASTROPHIC FAILURE...POWER GRID...STARV...DYIN...NEED ASSISSSSSSSS." It was there that the transmission froze after becoming stuck like an old warn out record on the voice's 'S'.
Inzjana rewound the message and froze it on the clearest image of what the beings must look like and isolated a copy to another file, sending both to science station one on the bridge.
Inzjana then went to work on the probe's telemetry data with Inigo Montaña staring at the image of the unknown species, fantasizing of what they must be like, for that was why the 19 year old had joined Starfleet and did science in the first place, the wonder and mystery of SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER!!!
The telemetry from the probe showed an irradiated atmosphere from the only habitable planet in the system, which just happened to be the only planet in the system..."That was lucky" Inigo Montaña said, pointed at the planetary metrics, when he finally came out of his revelry and read the telemetry with Inzjana. "Indeed Mr Montaña," Inzjana agreed, bringing the rest of the telemetry on screen.
***
PLANET SIZE: 12,701 km
GRAVITY: 0.8G
PLANET CLASS: M
STAR CLASS: G1V
ORBIT: 0.8 AU
ATMOSPHERE: 16% OXYGEN, 5% NITROGEN, 79% TRACE
SURFACE CONDITION: HAZARD LEVEL 2
INDIGENOUS POPULATION: UNKNOWN
BIOMETRICS: INHABITED.
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