Entering The Structure

Mission Time: 1756, March 10th, 2154

The repel line tightened as Andy made sure that Alicia's repel motor was fastened up correctly. He gave her the thumbs up and she leaned backwards off the lip of the cavern and ensured the rope was taught before jumping off backwards. The little motor started instantly and she could hear it fight gravity to slow her descent. She had done these kind of ops before manually, and the motor made life so much easier that she didn't know how she had survived without it.

Her shoulder lamp kicked on and illuminated the huge opening as she went, but the echo-pack couldn't get past the second, lower ledge of the chasm. Her feet landed on the slope and she hopped down backwards slowly until she reach the edge and found another near vertical drop. The chemstick she had thrown earlier was close to a thousand feet further down. Even the high powered floodlight on her echo-pack couldn't fully puncture the dark. She tried her comm in her helmet but it was already receiving too much interference from below to function properly so she plugged in to the fiber optic line instead.

-=Pausing at 500 feet.=- She said. -=Go ahead and hook in two more lines. Looks like this thing doesn't bottom out until about fifteen hundred feet.=-

-=Got it. Two lines. =-

The entire length of the rope connected to Alicia's harness wobbled as the engineer did her work topside. She went ahead and staked a guide loop for the line into the edge of the lip so that the cable wouldn't get damaged on the rocky edge. Then she continued her descent.

Her feet touched down on a metallic surface covered in strange runes. Stalagmites had formed across sections of the platform she could see, which was further across than she could see. The range of her light only peirce 700 feet or so of darkness.

-=Found the source of the signal.=- She said. - =Looks like a structure, or maybe a craft. It's been here for a long time. Judging by these stalagmites I'd say ten million years plus. Definitely extraterrestrial in origin. Rock on the descent looks damaged very recently, but this cavern... It's old.=-

-=We're coming down.=- Dr. Oliver said over her radio.

Alicia reached up to scratch her chin but forgot that she was wearing a breather.

-=Not sure I agree, sir. =- She said. She was walking across the surface of the structure, examining it as she went. -=Perhaps we should just proceed with a small team, myself and Julie and security, until we know what we're dealing with here.=-

-=Negative. An extraterrestrial structure this old requires special attention. There are protocols.=-

Alicia sighed. Her lamp settled on a structure that was pointing up through the chasm that looked to her like a cannon. There was something that looked like a hatch next to it.

A few minutes later Andy came down with a repel cable. Julie followed with a third repel line. The rest of the team came after that, including a basket of supplies and BOB, their exploration droid.

Julie used BOB to start prying the hatch. When it didn' pry she had it cut the hatch away.

"Catercrawler's got about 12 hours of life left on the power cells before we need to leave. We go in, do a preliminary survey, then we come back later for a more in depth look. No one speaks of this over the radio. For now on it's word of mouth. We have to protect our finding in case anyone is listening. Andy, lead us in. "

Andy voiced understanding and tossed a chemlight into the hatch. It looked like the floor was only 12 feet down. He threw a cable over next and went in. The rest of the team lowered in the supplies, BOB, and then themselves. The structure was similar in construction to most human buildings, save for the runes that marked the walls and floors in all directions. There were three halls; one to the north, one to the east, and one to the west.

Alicia checked the echo-pack and her comm.

"Electronics are still blocked." She said. "How do you want us to proceed?"

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Dr. Oliver (Male, Fine)

Alicia (Female, Fine)

Julie (Female, Fine)

Jennifer (Female, Fine)

Luther (Male, Fine)

Andy (Male, Fine)

Henrietta (Female, Fine)

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