Dead or Alive

Color II

After the successful first command mission of Captain Calvin Capps, it was at the discretion of Starfleet that the crew of the USS Boudicca be assigned a mission that would prove less involved than previous assignments. The crew was tasked with inspecting Color II, a planet recently accepted into the United Federation of Planets. The crew was to make sure that the planet adhered to all aspects of the Federation Charter. The mission seemed to be a degree less stressful than dealing with pirates and was a welcomed mission to the crew.

A Deafening Silence

The inhabitants of Color II

Upon arrival at Color II the crew received no response to their attempts to hail the planet. It almost seemed as if the entire population had abandoned the planet's surface. However, that proved to be false, when initial scans indicated that the planet's population had been greatly reduced in comparison to information transmitted only days prior. For a better grasps of the situation Captain Calvin Capps ordered three away teams down to find out what had happened to the inhabitants of Color II.

The first team to beam down comprised of security officers to secure the landing site before the other departments beamed down. Once everyone was present Captain Capps ordered a radial scan of the surrounding area and in pairs everyone moved out in a dedicated cardinal direction. Lieutenant Mia Saryn and Lieutenant Ryko Skylynx traveled north with the Captain, Lieutenant Detron Trei and Ensign Elizabeth Caspian traveled west, and Lieutenant Henry Jacobs and Ensign Stephan Getman were ordered to the east. This left lieutenant Deynyk Rinn to explore the area immediately surrounding the transport site.

To the north the Captain and his team entered an abandoned store only to find dismembered bodies in a blood - soaked room prompting them to return back to the rendezvous point. Whatever had taken place on the planet had decidedly been very violent in nature.

The mysterious Beast of Color II

While traveling to the west Dr. Caspian underwent a mental attack from an unknown assailant. This required Trei to assist her back to the transport site. The full force of the attack was very debilitating, and only later would the away team realize that this was their first encounter with the creature known as the Beast.

Meanwhile, while exploring what seemed to be the surface storage unit for the power harvested from the planet's core, byt the Geothermal power planet deep beneath the city's surface, Jacobs was assaulted and temporarily captured by two local inhabitants. He was rescued within minutes by Getman and a small security detail.

As they all headed back to their initial transport point, members of the away team became aware of a mob of shambling inhabitants headed their direction. Upon inspection, from a distance, it quickly became obvious that many of the inhabitants of Color II had somehow become overcome and were now in a zombified state. The horde of the zombies chased the away team into the power warehouse from which Getman had just rescued Jacobs from his captors.

Rinn, in the subterranean tunnels had also encountered a similar mob of Zombies and had retreated back to the surface. unable to link up with the rest of the away team, he was forced to seek shelter in a nearby deli.

The location chosen by the main body of the away team proved a difficult one. The building seemed to be magnetically shielded to such a high degree that the latent fields significantly interfered with the away teams communicators. While Getman, Skylynx and the security detail held the door to the building against zombie attack, Capps led the remainder of his away team upwards to the upper floor. The team them proceeded to cut a hole into the roof to better facilitate communication with the USS Boudicca.

Across the street, Rinn had made spotty contact with the captain, and as a result he had determined that a distraction needed to be made in an attempt to draw off some of the attacking zombies. He jury-rigged an explosive device in the deli and headed for the street.

The deli explosion

Big Bada-Boom!

The resultant explosion did, indeed catch the attention of the Zombie horde, which abandoned their efforts to get at the away team fortified within the building, and instead began chasing Rinn.

The respite was short lived, however, when a storage mysterious beast appeared and assaulted the members of the away team with some sort of Telepathic attack. This did not prevent the away team's escape, though as Nickolas Romanoff, managed to have the majority of the away team beamed off the planet.

Those stuck in the lower level of the building were not able to be retrieved and as a result took to a series of underground tunnels associated with the Geothermal tap power plant that powered the city. They collapsed the main tunnel behind them, preventing any immediate pursuit by the Zombie hordes.

First Contact

The Telepathic Interface Device as seen on the holodeck of the USS Boudicca

Aboard the Boudicca, finally cleared by sickbay of potential contagions, Detron Trei made his way to the holodeck, where he activated the Telepathic Interface Device and attempted to track the beast that the away team had glimpsed on the surface of the planet. There was an attack, but the device prevented any real injury to either party. It was now confirmed however that the Beast was, in fact telepathic.

A Narrow Escape

Under Captain Calvin Capps guidance, a portion of the away team managed to cut a hole through the roof of the building where the team had selected to dig in to hold of the horde of Zombie creatures. The hole in the roof allowed a narrow transporter fix to be established and the away team there managed to beam out off the planet's surface.

A moment later the Boudicca beamed Lieutenant Rinn off the planet as well. Only a handful of the security personnel and Doctor Mia Saryn were left behind. The team began to move underground, navigating a series of tunnels that led them deeper underground as the team sought to avoid the encroaching hordes of Zombie-like colonists.

Down the Rabbit Hole

the Geothermal Tap facility on Color II

With the team returned to the Boudicca, the parameters of the original mission shifted to a rescue and recovery operation. In this case, the crew not only had to provide aid to any survivors remaining on the planet, but also to locate their own missing away team.

Before the entire plan could be put together, however, a sudden, unexpected power failure began to appear in various systems throughout the Boudicca. The first couple of occurrences were minor problems, but as time progressed the severity of the situation and occurrences began to worsen.

The first serious failure took place in the shuttle bay of the Boudicca. unexpectedly the outer doors of the shuttle bay cycled open and the emergency forcefield failed. In this single instance, several crew members from the engineering and science department were sucked out into the cold expanse of space. Although the system rebooted quickly, the harm had been done and no one who had been in that compartment survived the decompression and freezing cold.

During this time, The beast managed to make some sort of Empathic contact with Yeoman Meggan Puceanu. The contact caused the young woman to slip into her normal nearly incomprehensible native slang, and to also begin to suffer impressions and visions associated with the Earth book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Deadlines, deadlines

With the situation worsening, a rescue effort was decided to be the best course of action for the Boudicca crew to undertake. It was hoped that the away teams sent down to the planet might also somehow manage to discover some sort of clues that would help them get to the bottom of the power fluctuations that were taking part on the Boudicca.

The away teams would be beaming down three teams, which were heavily stocked with marines. The idea was that Rinn and Henry Jacobs would move to explore the Geothermal Tap power plant that normally provided the planet with it's power, while the other two away teams searched through the labyrinth of tunnels that ranged out under the capital city in the hopes of locating the missing away team and any possible survivors.

Into the Maw of Hell

An egg belonging to the Beast of Color II found to emit Duonetic fields

Rinn and Jacobs, along with a small gourd of marines descended into the depths of the Geothermal taps facility, after managing to beam down into the facilities emergency transporter room. From there, they began to search for any potential clues as well as any survivors.

The team encountered several waves of Zombies, and in each instance they managed to narrowly escape without serious loss or injury. Eventually they reached an area where a particulary large group of Zombies had gathered around some sort of glowing egg-shaped object.

After a hard firefight, the Zombies were eliminated and Jacobs and Rinn moved to investigate the strange device. It was determined that it was most likely some sort of egg, and that it was likely that it belonged to the beast that had been encountered earlier by the away team during their first excursion to the planet.

The planet's Geothermal tap was pumping massive amounts of power into the egg-like structure, producing a Duonetic Field which seemed to pulse. It seemed that it was those pulses that were affecting the Boudicca despite the fact that the ship was in orbit over the planet.

After Henry Jacobs made some modifications to their phasers, Rinn and Jacobs used them to destroy the egg, restoring power to the planet and stopping the increasing power failures taking place aboard the Boudicca in orbit.

Call to Arms

Meanwhile the other away teams had managed to locate a pocket of Survivors in the underground tunnels and had managed to lead them to the surface of the planet. There, a group of marines using Trojan Class Marine Drop-Shuttles began evacuating the survivors. The operation became critical, however, when the Beast attacked the effort and the marines were forced to fight back.

The fight escalated as swarms of Zombie hordes and the Beast assaulted the Starfleet officers and marines on the surface of the planet. The use of shuttle craft running air support helped turn the tide of battle ageist the creature. Seriously injured, the partial destruction of some of the cities power relay grids helped ground the creature, which inevitably died on the planet.

Aftermath

With the creature dead, the Hordes of zombies became less aggressive, and teams were able to effect the evacuation of the survivors that they had managed to find. The hard work had just begun however as members of the ship's crew began the process of converting portions of the ship's storage areas into emergency berthing for the survivors.

With no known cure for the disease that had ravaged the planet's population, the future of Color II's survivors remained an unknown at this time.