I gotta bad feeling about this

[Atragon9 0]

Computer, open personal log, Admiral Atragon-9, Commanding Officer, USS Manticore, NCC-5852, password *********

 

[whirr, click]

 

The away team has been out of contact for 25 minutes and it's driving me crazy!

 

The team has been descending into the Ganges Chasma in the Southern quadrant of Mars, in search of the source of strange, but regular, signals being transmitted. After we lost the science shuttle and a crew member to the automated violent response, I approved a "spelunking" mission into the canyon. It seems like 3/4 of the senior staff volunteered and I had to admit that they were needed for the task. So, here we are, with most of my commanders and chiefs four miles below the surface of Mars, facing some unknown and unfriendly systems and completely out of communicator or transporter contact.

 

In the meantime, I am spending my time shooting at our extendable Engineering lab up here. It would be more satisfying if I could just hit the darned thing, but at least I'm making Garnoopy happy since it means the Phase Cloak is working... on that small of an object. We reeled it out behind us and surrounded it with the cloak and it really did "wink" out of phase. We couldn't see it, detect it or shoot phasers and hit it. I still wanted to go for a photon torpedo, but the Chief seemed a bit nervous of actually damaging the lab - oh well. I guess the next test will be to cloak something with a person inside and then, once that's working, to try cloaking larger and larger objects until we feel comfortable about cloaking the whole ship.

 

Then, once we can truly cloak out of phase, we will be able to ... gads, who am I kidding?? I can't keep from coming back to this Away Team. I can't believe I let so many of them go down there. I should have my head examined - but I can't, the Counselor is down there! Along with the XO, Ops, Helm, CSEC, CMO, TAC... sheesh, at least I know that Sovak will take good care of them down there. He won't do anything foolish or dangerous. ::chuckles:: I can see them now, complaining that he kept them from really exploring and analyzing the source. I just have to wait a few more minutes for them to check in and get me a status - but ohh, the waiting is getting to me. Time to start pacing.

 

Computer, EOM, EOT

 

[whirr, click]