Iconians or Irony?

Posted on Tue Jul 26th, 2011 @ 4:13am by Lieutenant Colonel Anastasia DeVries & Lieutenant Commander Aral Aix & Lieutenant Xylia Lischka & Lieutenant JG Toshie Minamoto

Mission: Tomorrow's Arizona
Location: Surface - Unknown Planet
Timeline: Following 'Curmudgeon in the Sky with... donuts?'

Having departed the bridge and assembling her operatives within the transporter room, the Lieutenant Colonel wasted no time in ordering the small group to the surface below. The planet, in itself, was relatively unknown and despite extensive ship wide scans there was still little information available to them as to just where they were and what they could expect. In fact, the only thing that was certain was the discovery of ancient ruins being present. And who better to sift through the proverbial ashes than her makeshift dream team.

"Alright boys and girls," she began once they fully rematerialized, "keep your eyes peeled... there's no telling just what the hell might be lurking around the corner. Aside from that, our mission objective is pretty clear... we're to investigate the ruins and see if we can determine an origin... or anything else. Also, the boss demands a... souvenir... so anything shiny works. Any questions?"

"Seems pretty cut and dry, but experience with previous situations like that... As for souvenirs, Cowell might have to be happy with a rock." Lieutenant Lischka stated. She had no intentions of being caught by surprise this go around, and happened to be prepared for anything popping up in an attempt to take them by surprise. The last away mission was supposed to be fairly easy, too, but they landed in jail. She didn't want to taken prisoner by anything or anyone again.

Unphased by the Executive Officer's apathy Aral Aix, spurred on by scientific curiosity, had drifted a couple of steps away from the main group. The team's landing site was a small clearing on an elevated patch of terrain. Shielding his eyes from the harsh light of the suns the Chief Science Officer peered into the distant, shimmering horizon. The landscape was barren, still; that which had not been washed away by the warm wind had been bleached to a pale yellow over millennia by the suns. The architectural ruins the Arizona had detected from orbit extended miles in every direction from Aix's vantage point. The city appeared to have been built into a vast basin, possibly a sea long dead when the city was new.

Aix, after shaking off his admiration of the planet, attended to the bleeping tricorder that lay idle in his hand. He poked it surgically, squinting his eyes in the bright light. He took several low resolution scans of the area and atmospheric samples before moving on to the building. Aral had always considered himself a real scientist, a theoretical physicist and mathematician. It was therefore with something approaching modesty that he inspected the script that was etched into a column. The column, one of several carelessly strewn about the clearing, was densely covered in an unknown script. The Trill, a linguist in a previous lifetime, was baffled. He scanned it with his tricorder, saving the data to be processed when they returned to the Arizona.

"This script is not Iconian as we know it." Aral remarked. He had downloaded all known examples of the Iconian alphabet into his tricorder before they had departed. "It does not seem to resemble any known language in the universal translator matrix."

"So you're saying the old one was right then," the Colonel smirked as the Science Officer made a commentary about the language he'd found.

Intrigued, Aral made a deep level scan along a fracture in the stonework and frowned into his tricorder. "If anything, I'd say it was older. The mineral decay and structural stresses in this building suggest it is almost half a million years old." He shook his head in wonder, the away team was looking at the remains of one of the oldest civilizations in the universe.

Stace turned to Lieutenant Minamoto, "You have any idea where we might be, as far as city structure goes?"

"Mhm..." Aral muttered absent mindedly as he frowned into his tricorder, "but being four times older than the universe probably gives him the edge with these things..."

Xylia left DeVries and Aix to their musings while she took a look around. Given that the structures were fairly old, she was overly cautious in where she stepped. She took in the ruins, taking note that there was an absence of battlements and other types of defensive structures. What was that all about? The majority of civilizations were known for battling one another, but given the lack of those things.. She shook her head and continued on before heading back toward the other after a few moments. "There are no defensive structures or any other signs of keeping other races out. Whoever these ruins belonged to don't appear to have liked fighting others."

Toshie had her own tricorder out, indeed it had been out since less then a minute after beam-in. She stepped forward, scanning around, "Judging by what we see here and what's on my tricorder, I think we're in the center of the market of the city." She pointed at a large building on one end, "Note the columns and architecture. I've seen buildings like that before, but I can't place it. Some sort of major building, though. Maybe a religious site or a government building. Hard to tell." Her lips pursed as she thought to herself. 'Come on, Minamoto, you can make sense of this.' Her eyes glanced up, flashing at the ruins in the center of the square, "Judging by this fountain, this looks like it used to be a pretty important sector of the city."

Aral broke away from the microanalysis of the building materials upon hearing Toshie's remarks, he could not make neither head nor tail of his results. He admired the now dry and crumbling stone bowl Toshie gestured at. A wide angled scan of the ground beneath their feet showed a number of metallic signs sporadically distributed beneath their feet. He looked at Stace, "You wanted something shiny for the Commodore, start digging..."

As Aix and Minamoto started reaching for the shovels from the equipment bag the entire away team found themselves encased in the blue haze of a transporter bream. When Aral next opened his eyes, he was in Transporter Room One.