Stardate: 60711:2245
Title: "Sweat & the Grassy Knoll"
Author: Ensign Cul’Dumok
Time: After "Watching the Horizon"
Scene: Surface of Tharan 3


Ensign Cul’Dumok sat back on a now empty cargo storage unit having erected various tents and semi-permanent accommodation units and then moved the various pieces of medical equipment to the area as outlined by Lt Autumn Falls. Dumok felt perspiration gather in various awkward and uncomfortable places as he had been wearing the biohazard suit throughout. He would be pleasantly relieved to take it off when the Horizon’s Captain or Medical Team deemed it safe to do so.

In his ‘previous’ life he would have been shocked and outraged to be engaged in such a menial a task and then to be expected to co-operate in such mind-numbing manual labour. Now Dumok felt strangely elated, an almost foolish and childish sense of pride in a simple job, done well and to order. Cul’Dumok looked up at the overcast dun coloured heavens, droplets of rain spattering upon the faceplate of the biohazard suite, he followed each droplet with his eyes as the rain coursed randomly down the plasteel.

The emergency medical centre, which was no-doubt what the site would become, stretched across a level expanse of asphalt and concrete that may have been planned as groundwork for some building required by the settlers of Tharan 3. Now it would be little more than the final resting place for many of the plague-ridden survivors. Cul’Dumok wondered if the world of Tharan 3 would ever recover from the plague that had killed so many of the settlers, or perhaps it would be quarantined for some time until declared safe for habitation and further re-settlement?

Standing he walked over to Lt Falls who seemed to be doing an equipment check of some kind.

"Is there anything else you require?" Cul’Dumok asked in an even tone "If not I would like to return to the ship and get out of this suit. Apart from its decided lack of sartorial elegance I sense that, soon, it will be like an unpleasant swimming pool of fluids… from the inside"

~

As Dumok turned and walked towards the mass of the USS Horizon he caught something out of the corner of his eye or perhaps he sensed something, like an itch he couldn’t scratch (wearing this suit it could be both he smiled to his own amusement).

Then, on the horizon of a low grassy mound or knoll, there amongst some gnarled brush and stunted trees, he was sure he saw some movement. The shake of a branch and the shiver of leaves in a non-existent breeze, Cul’Dumok was sure that the Horizon’s Away Party was being watched and not by some plague-ravaged survivor or scared settler of Tharan 3

[Ensign Cul’Dumok to Bridge, can you please scan the area of a knoll some one hundred and fifty yards to the southeast of my present position… I believe we may have company!]

Cul’Dumok walked forward, turning his back to the possible watcher in the undergrowth, and set his sidearm to stun…


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Ensign Cul'Dumok
Security/Special Ops
USS Horizon
NCC-72400
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