Mine Craft

Posted on Mon Sep 28th, 2026 @ 10:32pm by Lieutenant Darla Kennings & Ensign Emily Bowman & Lieutenant Alice Durant & Ensign Zoey Armstrong & Petty Officer 1st Class Celes Fara

3,299 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 2: Mine of Taurus
Location: Taurus II Surface

Below the shuttle, hints of garden paths the size of boulevards could be seen among the high grass and bushes. What once had been a nicely manicured, sprawling, colorful garden had been reclaimed by the wilderness, with only echoes of the roads, borders and stone columns remaining, covered by grass, moss, vines and other plant life, passing under the shuttle.

As the columns and trees gave way to open lawns and large water-collection vases, Darla pointed to a wide open area. “That’s where the compound was,” she said. “We should land and inspect it."

“Aye, Lieutenant,” Celes said, banking towards the ground and bringing them in for a landing.

"What happened to the compound?" Zoey asked, as she noticed there was signs nature was reclaiming the area.

"According to my great-grandmother," Darla said as the shuttle landed on a wide stretch of stone pathway, "she and two other women borrowed phasers from the Enterprise and destroyed every piece of technology within it. The only things they kept were these." She touched the gold circlet around her forehead, the blue jewel in the center glowing softly. "They kept these and passed them down as a reminder of what they'd done, and what they had to repay." She shook her head, looking at the mostly empty lot. "I didn't think they destroyed the entire settlement, though."

"Well someone did," Celes said as they got closer and flew over the site. She brought them around and settled down on one of the wide, plant-covered, stone streets. She secured the engines and powered down the shuttle, standing up.

Darla stood up as the engines went silent and took a deep breath, walking over to the hatch and unsealing it. "Keep an eye out for anything unusual. There aren't any predators, in fact there's practically no animal life at all, so if you see movement, report it." She gripped her tricorder in her hand and stepped out into the rich, spring air.

Emily stood and followed, opening her tricorder and scanning the area. She picked up plenty of plant life, but as Darla had said, didn't detect any life forms other than the five of them. "No harmful particles in the air detected, no dangerous pathogens, no unusual gasses."

Bianca's own tricorder was out and scanning, but she wasn't paying much attention to it, instead her eyes were looking around for anything out of place with an expertise that wasn't quite an engineers. The overheard mentions from Darla caused a glance over to her before she went back to looking around the group.

Celes stepped out and looked around. She didn't have a tricorder, only a phaser on her hip, so she stuck to visual observation.

Zoey couldn't shake the feeling that something seemed a little off, she just had an eerie feeling that crawled up her skin. "This place seems a little off, despite its natural beauty." Zoey mention to the group that she started to pull out her tricorder.

"Most graveyards do," Darla said. "Keep your eye on the barometric pressure," she added to Zoey. "Storms appear swiftly and they are intense. If we need to make a run for the shuttle, I want as much warning as we can get."

Zoey noticed some fluctuations, but they seem to be holding for the moment. Nothing seem to unusual but she couldn't shake the feeling that something just seemed off. She wasn't sure if it was a mission jitters, or her gut feeling was telling her something was off.

Emily walked over to her friend and held her hand. "You okay?" she said, quietly.

"Just getting a strange vibe from this place, can't explain it." Zoey said to her, as she whispered back to Emily.

Emily nodded. "Yeah, it does have that 'creepy abandoned' look to it." She walked towards the steps to the compound behind Darla, pulling Zoey with her. "Well, so long as we don't wander off, we'll be okay," she said. "And if you see any mean-looking plants, you just tell me." She smiled at her.

Zoey grinned as she said, "If you see me running, follow me. I'm not dying from a plant." She said worth a snarky grin, but then felt a cold rush through her bones. Her friend was right, this place was spooky.

"Same," Emily promised. "I intend us to come back to the ship photosynthesis free." She looked over at Darla who was looking out at the horizon and seemed to find what she wanted.

"You are asking a lot of the universe. With all the antics we play, that's asking a ton," Zoey teased Emily. She deep down though hoped that no one was hurt of injured during this mission.

Emily grinned and closed her tricorder. "Yeah, well, you don't get what you don't ask for," she said, giving Zoey's cheek a kiss. "C'mon we should join the others.

"Are you trying to make Sebastian jealous?" Zoey said, wondering why her friend kissed her on the cheek. Emily was a little to friendly, but then again, Zoey could be just as friendly too. It's probably why they are good friends.

"Nope," Emily said with a slight sigh and shake of her head. "Not my intention at all."

***

"This way," Darla said, leading them down the wide, moss-covered, stone path. Zoey was right, there was a lot of natural beauty to the area. She could only imagine it looked even more impressive when it was maintained. She wished there had been better cultural records of who built it. Her great-grandmother's generation was left with vague stories, and a computer system, the opto-aud, that ran the entire compound and theoretically knew what answers to give, but the women never had any relevant questions. Unfortunately, in order to destroy the lura-mag, the machine that lured ships in, they were forced to destroy everything, losing their culture's history and knowledge in the process. Her great-grandmother had called it a 'fitting sacrifice', believing their culture was not worth saving, given the evil they had done. Darla wasn't sure she agreed.

What confused her was the remains of the compound itself. Nothing any of the elders had described was here, and nothing they'd talked about made it sound like the place was razed to the ground. She opened her tricorder and scanned the area again. Still no lifesigns. As they approached the stone foundation by what must have been the original entrance, she looked at the twisted pink metal alloys of the planet, the empty struts that used to house gold frames for the walls, and the stone sculptures that were smashed or knocked into corners into the distance.

"All right," she said, stepping into the empty space that had once been the main receiving chamber, "start scanning. Report anything you find. I want to know what happened here."

Finally, Bianca started to separate from the rest of the group, eyes again scanning everything and making mental notes that she'd put down in a supplemental report for her supervisory team later. This was probably the first trip back to this world since it had been evacuated, which meant an update was needed.

Zoey started to walk across the fields, taking in the beauty as her tricorder did all the actually hard work, of scanning the area. She was looking for any signs of unusual bio signatures or energy patterns. So far she was detecting nothing.

Emily stood with Darla, scanning the compound. "No signs of life," she said. "I mean...it's a pile of barely rubble, so I wouldn't expect any."

Darla nodded. "I wouldn't either," she said, looking through some of the stone sculptures that had toppled. "But something took this place apart, and I'm guessing it wasn't random storms."

It took several minutes for her to see it, but something kept drawing Bianca back to the walls. It wasn't that they were any less destroyed than the rest of everything in the chamber, but it was after she closed her tricorder and actually compared them to the rest of the area that things came into sharper focus. And that was the point. "Lieutenant Kennings?" She called out as she crouched by the remnants of the wall, "You may want to see this." Her higher pitched voice echoed throughout the room, "This isn't natural, for one, but it also wasn't damaged the same way as everything else, it's too precise, removed intentionally and deliberately."

Zoey wondered what Bianca had discovered. Like Bianca, she was scanning her part of the remnants of a lost colony. She wondered how Darla was taking this moment. This planet once housed her people. Now it was gone. She tried to image how she would feel if her home was gone. As she contemplated they, she continued her scans.

As Bianca ran her hand along the smooth surface, she noted marks on the exposed bricks and her memories began to flash through her head. If this were a cutting edge, those should be grip marks, but even Federation industrial equipment had its unique and standard marks it would leave on stone. She gently blew on the dust that had recently collected on the grip marks, four points of contact, not the seven that was standard, “This wasn’t Federation, it’s too few.” She glanced up to see Darla standing over her, “This wasn’t us or anyone from the Federation, it’s more slap-dash, cutting safety corners.”

"Salvage work," Darla said. "Doesn't have to be pretty, just has to be fast. They weren't taking the structure, just the material. But why? The walls were gold and metal, hardly rare commodities."

"I am finding trace remnants of Alphanite and Duratanium allow signatures. That is very peculiar." Zoey said, as she started to follow the bread crumbs, and wondering why she was finding these two elements.

"Those are common materials from the Orion system," Celes said. "They're used in manufacturing and mining. It drills in well, but it chips easily."

Darla looked around. "So they processed the compound and the things they used to cut up the planet's alloy chipped off as they left?"

Celes shrugged. "Possibly." She looked at Zoey. "Is it spread around everywhere? Or can you see if there's a trail?"

"I have a faint trail." Zoey called out, as she calibrated her scanner to follow the trail. She started to walk towards the forest edge. On the ground near the forest was small shavings. "I got something."

"All right," Darla said, raising her voice so they'd all hear. "Everyone back to the shuttle. Let's see where this trail leads." She took one more look at the former building and turned her back to it, heading back down the stairs to the path back to the shuttle, her pace not leaving time to look around anymore.

Zoey looked to Darla. She understood the order, but she wanted to look around more. But they had a job to do. She had to tell the scientist in her to focus on the mission at hand. She started to head back towards the shuttle craft.

Emily followed them back, taking a few more lifesigns scans, but finding nothing new. She shrugged and put her tricorder away, hurrying back up the ramp to the relative safety of the shuttle and sat down.

Celes walked quickly and stepped inside the shuttle and back to the pilot's seat, restarting the engines.

Bianca's eyes remained on the move, trying to record everything they could see for future reports.

As the shuttle lifted off once again, Darla stood behind Zoey. "All right, can you have the sensors follow the trail of the material? If we can track where they went we can see where their processing spot was."

Zoey transferred the data to the shuttle, as she took the pilot seat. "I have a bearing Doctor. Coordinates 45 by 213." Zoey called out. As she plotted the coordinates into the navigation system.

"Celes, set course and engage," Darla said without hesitation.

"Aye, Ma'am," Celes said, banking hard and bringing them to the new heading.

Darla sat down and let out a breath. "Everyone keep an eye on the sensors. Watch for lifeforms, artificial structures, anything that isn't woods or grasslands."

After approximately eight minutes, the sensors began to beep. "Doctor, I'm detecting an artificial structure," Celes said.

"Reading a dozen lifeforms," Emily said.

They flew over a series of hills and suddenly a large canyon opened up before them. At the bottom, in the center of it was a large pit with multiple holes bored into the ground. A series of platforms had been erected and two were in the process of boring more holes into the soil. At the center of the chaos was a series of small prefabricated buildings.

"It looks like a mining operation," Darla said. She paused as she saw shuttle near the edge of the facility, and a second, empty landing pad next to it. She turned and looked to Celes. "Get us out of their line of sight."

Celes looked at her but nodded. "Yes Ma'am." She banked quickly, turning them around.

Emily turned around. "Um....Doc? Shouldn't we try to contact the ship?"

Darla looked back at her then nodded. "Good idea," she said, opening a secure channel. "Kennings to Scharnhorst," she said. They all waited, but no response came. "Kennings to Scharnhorst, come in," she said.

"Ma'am, we're being jammed." Bianca watched the readings on the comm system, then tried switching frequencies, "They're blanketing the channels, I can't get through at all."

Darla bit her lip and looked back at the sensors. "All right then, we'll return to the ship and--" she cut off as the shuttle suddenly rocked and alarms blared.

"We're under attack," Celes said, trying not to sound overly panicked. "I don't know how they got that shuttle launched and at us so fast."

"There was a second one," Darla said. "It must have been on patrol, or we just got unlucky." Another shot grazed them and Celes dove away quickly.

Fortunately, the hills surrounding the mining facility were so clustered and the valleys so tight where they were that as they wove between them, they were able to lose the other shuttle for a moment. Celes took the opportunity to swing in the last direction they'd expect, back towards the mines, and as they came back out into the canyon, saw one side was pock marked with several large caves. She quickly ducked the shuttle deep into one and killed the engines.

Everyone sat and waited for the sound of the enemy shuttle trying to fly in after them, but after ten minutes, all was quiet. "I think," Darla said, "we lost them."

"They're making a detailed scan of the surface." Bianca watched the sensors, "I'm getting scatter of their emissions, they don't have us, that much I can guarantee."

Emily's heart was pounding and she swallowed hard. "That was...way closer than I wanted to get to them," she said, her voice a bit shaky. Combat was new for her, and her usual bravado was gone.

"Well one problem down, thank god." Zoey said, feeling a little relieved, her anxiety levels started to stabilize.

"A few dozen to go," Emily said.

Darla looked at Celes. "Can the shuttle reach orbit?"

"I'll have to run some diagnostics and inspect the damage," Celes said. She looked over at Bianca. "Lend a hand?"

"I um..." Bianca gave Celes a glance, "I guess I can? I'm not the best with shuttle maintenance, but sure?"

"No, I need her with us," Darla said.

"Us?" Emily said. "Aren't us...staying with the rest of us?"

Darla shook her head. "If we can't warn the ship, and we can't leave, we need to see what they're doing down there. There's something here worth attacking three starships and fortifying the system. We need to know what. With some luck, we might even throw a wrench into the machinery."

Emily paled a bit but tried to pull herself together. "And here I am, totally out of wrenches."

"Zoey, tricorder on passive scan; Emily, bring your medkit; Bianca, bring your toolkit," Darla said.

Zoey was a little nervous, they were armed and managed to keep them from escaping. She was a little nervous, she took a deep breath, as she tried to remain calm. "Aye Doctor." She managed to say with a calm voice, deep inside she was anything but calm. She had gotten good, at hiding her emotions on the surface level.

Bianca tried not to look too relieved as she picked up the case that carried the general toolkit of the engineer on the go. She prayed they wouldn't need it, nor her... Lack of ability.

Celes let out a slight grumble of annoyance, but she grabbed her toolkit without further complaint and got ready to get to work.

Everyone ready?" Darla said. As the other three nodded, she grabbed her own kit and phaser and walked to the hatch. "Let's go," Darla said, opening the shuttle door.

Zoey followed behind Darla, as she started to scan the area. "So far the path is clear, but reading strong energy readings from that mine you discovered earlier Doctor."

Emily followed behind Zoey, keeping close to her and looking around. "This cave was man-made," she said. "You can see the dig lines as they gouged it out."

"They were looking for veins of whatever they're mining," Darla said as they approached the mouth of the cave. "They dug deep, gave up, moved on. Swiss-cheesed this entire area in the process. When they realized it didn't have what they wanted, they went deeper. That's when they found what they were looking for."

"How do you know they found it?" Emily said.

"They're fighting like there's something worth protecting," Darla said. "Otherwise they'd have taken what they salvaged and cut their losses."

"Oh," Emily said. She hadn't considered that.

One of the added benefits of man-made caves was construction paths down the side of the hill. They kept against the hill and watched for the shuttle as they moved, keeping conversation to a minimum. Finally, after an hour or so, they came up over a small ridge and saw the mine up close.

"What can you all see?" Darla said, watching carefully.

Bianca's eyes narrowed as she watched the mine front with all of the excess equipment out in the open, "It looks like it's been recently used from back here." She said quietly, before a flicker of motion caught her eyes, which focused in on it instantly, "Someone's there... They're... Blue." She said softly, then whispered more to herself, "What the hell are they doing here?"

"Azures," Darla said, looking carefully.

"Azures?" Emily said.

"Blue Orions. Or-ee-ons, they usually call themselves," Darla said. "Uh oh, they're looking this way."

"I think there's a surveying us." Zoey said, thinking to herself that if she didn't know better it looked like they were also observing them. So who was really studying who here? Or maybe they were just hiding out waiting to ambush, she wasn't certain but if she had to guess she would say somebody was surveilling them.

"Well, I hope not," Emily said. "If they can see us then--" her sentence was cut off as the ridge in front of them suddenly erupted as a phaser shot hit right in front of them. She grabbed Zoey and pulled her away quickly, making her run alongside Emily down the ridge away from the shot.

Darla grabbed Bianca and pulled her in the opposite direction, the two of them rushing along another path into a ravine. Darla glanced back to shout to Emily and Zoey, but they were already out of sight, and she just hoped they were also out of danger.

 

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