Page 164 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

magma flows coming from the rifts nearest the volcano. Rising from the volcano’s crown was a tall
plume. Violent outbursts of ejecta were shooting extremely high into the atmosphere. This was
T’Shon’s equivalent of a Super Eruption. Hell was quite literally breaking loose; that or the Devil
below was trying to escape.

“Veklaar; I’m sending life feed to you now. I’m altering my course to circle the area at a safe
distance” Maria said over the coms.

“The area is just coming into view from our orbital position too. You’d better get up to the extraction
point in the cloud layer. That eruption is going up into the cloud layer. There’s no telling what this is
going to do to the turbulence that exists there already. Trok said he’ll activate the recall system so
you just sit back for the ride. Veklaar out!” was Krysta’s urgent reply. The automated recall system
cut in suddenly and threw Maria back into her seat with the rapid increase in G force. The tiny craft
screamed up into the upper atmosphere and punched out into the surrounding space. A traction
beam locked onto the Scout craft and pulled it into the Hangar bay. Maria had fallen unconscious
during all this so was unaware of proceedings. Her last thoughts before passing out were “Looks Like
I made the Devil mad Daddy. Forgive me”. Maria spent a couple of weeks recovering from her ordeal
in Med Bay. While there she went through the camera footage and did some basic editing. A lot of
the material was pretty much repetitive, so it could be left in the original files. She took choice clips
and composed a “Home Movie” from them. She intended to show the results at a special night in
the Mess Hall; but for now she needed to rest, her body was complaining bitterly about needing
sleep.

The Veklaar headed away from T’Shon and set about the complicated manoeuvre that
would put it in a stable orbit around She’brakda. The bridge was so silent during this it was very
likely that you could have heard a pin drop. Helm crew were concentrating hard on the minute
adjustments that were necessary. It would have been easier to have the Hive and Trok do the work,
but Krysta wanted to work her crew to test their abilities. Any good Captain would do this to make
sure that their crew could handle just about every situation thrown at them.

“Steady as she goes Luther! Engineering; lock those power settings” Krysta barked shattering the
deathly silence. Luther made some tiny final manoeuvres and breathed a sigh of relief as the ship
locked into a geostationary orbit above the dig site. He switched in the auto pilot systems and sat
back in his seat. “Well done man; well done all of you!” Krysta said and had them all lock down their

stations and prepare for the rest of the mission. Analysis
of the data from the last scans had identified an area that
would be safe for the landers. It was close to the original
dig site and offered some shelter from the noonday sun
when the High Summer hit. Mechanoids would take over
most of the hard work when that time came. But for now
it was going to be a long hard slog of removing rubble and
debris from the site; in particular the area where the
doorway should be. They would set up a base camp at the
landing site for exploratory groups to rendezvous and
exchange information. This; the first stage of many operations, had to be set up quickly. A change in
the weather patterns had been noted and if they didn’t get this initial surveying stage done soon, it
could be a month before the rain storms heading to the site let up. Rain would turn the area into a
quagmire to begin with; then the High Summer would bake the ground hard as concrete when it
arrived. This was not going to be a leisurely dig; the bulk of the work would have to be done with
alacrity. If they did it right then the weather problems should be minimised. The crews had to
prepare for a long haul if the information they sought and the first part of their mission objective
could be completed successfully.