[Captain's Log:] Pre-arrival at Alemar III

[tea_earlgrey_hot]

"Captain's Log, Stardate 43517.0: After a long delay in completing our mission to Alemar III, the Enterprise has finally come into orbit directly above the drilling facilities and welcome center run by Dr. Sk'Amor and her crew. An away team lead by Commander Riker has been dispatched to see the scientists safely to their destination. Due to the intense electromagnetic field surrounding the planet, beaming down is not an option, so all supplies and personnel must be transported by shuttle. The field also interrupts regular communications between the away team and the ship, which makes waiting for the shuttles to return particularly arduous, given our current troubles with The Q.

Commander Riker has managed to get a message through to the Enterprise, informing us that Dr.'s Sk'Amor and Nantor wish to thank us for the Federation's assistance in undergoing their current objectives, by opening up their facilities to guests for the next few hours. According to Commander Riker, they are quite insistent. Almarians value hospitality and gift-giving as signs of friendship, and refusing could be interpreted as an insult. Against my better judgment, I have allowed some guests to travel to Alemar III in the returning shuttles, where they will join members of the original away team who have remained behind. My hope is that the brief sojourn to the drilling facilities will stave off the growing unrest of some of our trapped guests, as well as solidify relationships between the Almarians and the Federation for years to come."

A ship-wide announcement has been made to all guests aboard the Enterprise. Alemar III is largely uninhabited, but the facilities run by Dr. Sk'Amor are very nice and expansive, safe for guests to tour. Someone will be happy to show them around for a few hours, if they would like to disembark.

They will be leaving from the main shuttlebay on Deck 4 in two hours.


[ooc: Arrivals post to follow in about two hours. Picard isn't hanging around to thread, but if there were any players who wanted to establish their characters as leaving the ship, feel free to use this post to write your exit, or to say goodbye to loved ones who are hanging back on the Enterprise. Only those who signed up for the game plot will be leaving the ship.]

Comments

[psychowolf]

Clay has been getting restless, even after his run. When the announcement was made Clay didn't hesitate to go. If he is going to be stuck away from home then there is no reason why he can't try to study other cultures. It is a rare opportunity.

[do_your_duty]

Aeryn is looking for John.

She's got a two-thousand metra stare going on, as she's walking quickly through and around groups of people gathering since the announcement. John knew to be here, yet somehow, to absolutely no one's surprise, especially not Aeryn's, John is absolutely no where to be found yet.

[just_a_chemical]

Here's... not John at all, but rather an Eleanor shuffling along with the walk of someone wearing much heavier footwear than usual. She's running a little later than she'd like, but that's only to be expected from a teenager, isn't it?

[do_your_duty]

"Hey!" It's not all that loud, but it is firm. When she's striding across the room. "Hey--yes, you."

Oh, yes. That's a problem. She might have forgotten the girl's name. It happens when only John has said it, and only a small number of times, and Aeryn hasn't actually met her. Only seen her pointed to once, or passed her in the hallway and assumed it was her, but never stopped to check. Because it wasn't all that important to her. People here. Making her will this to even be the right person.

"Where is Crichton?"

[just_a_chemical]

"Oh, he's in his room," she says.

She's a friend of his, right? How much detail would he want his friends to know?

"He's... a bit under the weather today. He says he's fine, just not fine enough to come along, I suppose--I don't blame him, if shuttles are anything like bathyspheres."

Even the smoothest bathysphere ride gets bumpy when docking. A shuttle takeoff and landing would probably not settle him down.

[do_your_duty]

Aeryn's brow wrinkled, and her mouth firmed, with a grimace of annoyed dsgust. A little offset by the whole idea already. John Crichton. Couldn't even manage to keep himself in one piece a whole month in this place, when all he had to do was stare on blank walls and not pick fights, seriously?

"Bathyo-what?" Aeryn repeated the word, before she was frowning and shaking her head. "Nevermind. He's back there, still?"

It's probably no one's imagination that Aeryn looks annoyed about second hand information either.

[just_a_chemical]

"He didn't look like he was going anywhere soon," she says. "Just staying in and letting it run its course. I left him some of those mint candies like Aunt Grace used to keep around. Some foods aren't our friends."

Which is why her own diet consists almost entirely of Red Bull and energy bars. She's not about to antagonize her slug by eating something she can't recognize.

[do_your_duty]

Aeryn added mint candies to long list of things she didn't know what was here. But she had at least mastered not having to ask any of the people speaking all their nonsense Earth words. She might not be able to read their language on a PADD, but after realizing she could get the computer to answer her if she spoke, it became easier to use a work around.

To ask what things were, and when it was available, which seemed to be often, pictures of what those things were even.

"Right." Aeryn half shook her head, all about John, and turned, headed to the closest door, walking straight through other groups.

[just_a_chemical]

Little peppermint pinwheels. A classic that, presumably, still graces the candy dishes of enough women of a certain age in the 24th century for the replicators to know what Eleanor meant.

She's used to abrupt dismissals from her mother, so this doesn't strike her as out of the ordinary at all. People get the information they need, and that's that--very efficient.

So Eleanor resumes shuffling around, contemplating the shuttlecraft and the journey ahead.

[do_your_duty]

Aeryn, not deterred by whatever human weakness John has decided to exhibit today, goes striding off fast and direct. Through the people. Through the doors. Down corridors which have, annoyingly, become not only familiar but locationally recognizable due the length of time they've been trapped here needing to use them.

She doesn't need to asked the computer to give her that blinking line of lights to know which ways to turn to get to the rooms, or inquire about which tubo lift where will get her to her destination. Even for all that it is nothing like a command carrier, with it's bright muted colors, it's a ship, and she can do ships.


She makes marginally effort not to go striding through people at least.

But she knows the time frame is short before the first even short escape from this ship.

[never_felt_better]

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Those nine words are going to be etched onto John's tombstone someday. It's a creed he lives by more than he'd ever admit. And hey, when you're just some geek from Earth stuck on the Enterprise with all your favorite regulars, not settling down to try every Klingon cuisine the replicators can provide seems like a gross error in judgment. It had worked out for Commander Riker, and John always did want to be like Commander Riker.

Only the day-after food poisoning wasn't part of his plan. He's trying to single out what did it, those fried calamari things or the brown spaghetti, or maybe it was the bowl of tan goo, or... nope, abort. ABORT. Do not think about it, it only makes things worse.

He's spread across the sofa in the common room in Room #0713, a rag folded over his eyes and a dour expression on his face. He's groaning, and muttering to himself, because he heard the announcement and it would just figure the first opportunity he has to get his Kirk on he's stuck inside a ten-feet radius of the bathroom at all times.

"Qapla' my happy Southern ass," he mutters.

[do_your_duty]

Round the right corners, walk the right hallway, and get back to the area where all the 'guests' were being held. It's a well lit prison, but still a prison. Reminds her more of Moya sometimes than she'd like. Except that it isn't a prison ship. Though she wouldn't put it past them having somewhere on this ship to hold prisoners, and if they didn't they were even stupider about their priorities than she already thought them to be.

Annoyingly, their doors don't just open right off the bat. She has to stop in front of it, and wait for someone inside.

[never_felt_better]

"Hmmf thh heffll if pwyying fuh trummbhhn?" John mutters, arms slung over his face muffling his voice. Translation: who the HELL is playing the trombone?

Oh. That would be the door chime. Funny how everything sounds louder when you're peaked. "Come."

Because, of course, even feeling like death warmed over he's going to get his best impression on. The door opens with a whoosh, and John shifts an arm to peek out across the room. Ah, the radiant Aeryn Sun.

"I hope you're happy," he grouses.

[do_your_duty]

"I will be once you get up and stop acting like a child. You're going to make us late."

Her face says rather loud and clear she can't believe he's trying to pull this now. His helpless, mess of a human, routine. He's managed to stumble upright through a dozen other things she hadn't thought he could. Kept coming out in one piece when all logic said he shouldn't. She wasn't fooled by his need to lay around on the ship, when they could be somewhere else. Somewhere not locked on this strange peace-driven, but security laden, ship.

[never_felt_better]

"Hell, I'm sorry Aeryn, is my inferior human anatomy inconveniencing you?" he mumbles, face first into the couch. Compassion: she's still gotta work on it.

It's not as bad as some of the crap he's been through since landing on Moya, but touring an alien planet would be a hell of a lot more fun if he wasn't sure the only thing he'd be seeing is the inside of their bathrooms. Assuming they have bathrooms. They have to have bathrooms, right?

"Listen, I don't think I'm going anywhere for another couple of hours at–ugh," he starts, cutting himself off when a wet burp roils to the surface. That... that was unpleasant. He keeps his fist in front of his mouth for a few more seconds, until he's sure he's not going to toss his cookies again. "—at least. If you want to go down to the planet, you should go without me."

It's not her first rodeo. Hell, he's surprised she even wanted to wait for him.

[dreams_dont_die]

So. They have the opportunity to visit this world. Dylan's been curious about it, of course, like he's curious about this whole universe ever since Trance pointed out the inherent similarities between the Federation and the Commonwealth. And if she thinks he has much to learn here, then he can learn from the places the Enterprise goes and the things the Federation does.

Not that he's in any position to expect much information about that, at the moment, especially given what Captain Picard had said to him about his crew.

But he'll go. He'll go to see the place, to see what's happening there.

Though that means he needs to spend some time with the replicator in his quarters. He's glad Rose mentioned that it can do more than food when he'd first arrived, because now he needs clothes, civilian clothes, and some way to carry his force lance without it being obvious that's what he's doing.

He doesn't even go anywhere on the Enterprise without it, but he also doesn't want to spook their hosts on the planet.

Which means that after he's managed to get the right parameters into the replicator to make him a civilian-looking outfit (or what would pass for one in his own time), and he's managed to get a pretty good copy of his favorite coat, he needs to do something about a holster.

Which takes a while. In the end, he has to sketch out a schematic to get the details right, because he's never actually made a force lance shoulder holster from scratch, and neither has the replicator.

Still, by the time the shuttles are ready to leave, he's got one, discreetly hidden under his buttoned-up coat.

[stark_spangled]

It's a hell of a thing watching an alien planet come up on a spaceship, growing by quick inches through the windows in Ten Forward. Steve watches from a table, alone, thinking about Apollo 11, the moon landing, the Space Race, Sputnik and famous space walks -- all of which he missed, because he was buried in the arctic while the Earth moved on.

This planet could be Earth, vast oceans surrounding a grey and white supercontinent, cloud covering swirling and thick. For a kid who missed out on fifty years of space exploration, he's now watching something few people back on Earth ever have. To say that it's humbling would be the biggest understatement he's ever made.


The announcement surprises him. He didn't expect that the officers in charge would give them such a long leash. It seems like an awfully big leap of faith letting people go down to a planet where they could easily scatter, or refuse to re-board the Enterprise. Still, he's not the one in charge here, and when faced with an opportunity to leave the ship, even for a little while, he's not going to kick a gift horse in the mouth.

He briefly contemplates changing into the uniform. After all, he doesn't know what he'll run into on the planet's surface. Eventually, he decides against it, opting to look more like the other tourists going up to the main shuttlebay except for one small detail: the brown leather satchel he carries over one shoulder, concealing something large and circular that lays flat against his back.

[just_be_quiet]

Andrew is very curious about getting to see an alien world. He wants to get to do something this brave without Bernie. Bernie tends to not leave his side usually but the boy doesn't want to get them in trouble.

"You gotta stay here," he informs the big dog. Bernie gives him a sulking look. Small boy should not leave his best friend. Andrew finds himself smiling slightly.

"I'll be okay. I don't think the grownups..." He pauses for a beat. "I'll be fine."

And Bernie will be too. Andrew had left out plenty of food and water for his beloved pet.