Stardate: 60709:1655
Title: Finds of Significance
Author: Lieutenant Maxine Jenna
Time: Current
Scene: Parsus


As the team walked across the cold planet's dusty surface, Maxine rechecked her data PADD. Parsus had been identified and classified in the late 23rd Century as a Class-M planet, with the original surveying team detailing it as 'one extensive desert' and noting the small ruins located in the southern hemisphere. High daytime temperatures swinging to low nighttime temperatures had also been recorded during their brief visit. After that, the recent history of the planet was surprisingly blank until the entries regarding the ruin excavation and the subsequent Dominion War.

Checking her tricorder was recording fully, Maxine began to add some notes to her PADD's entry. Still a Class-M planet (although barely), the devastation apparent on the surface and littering of debris from Federation, Dominion, Cardassian and other alien vessels suggested a major battle had taken place here. Such a swing from warm desert to cold and dusty desolation could only be the result of one thing - a 'Nuclear Winter'.

Rechecking the background radiation count, Maxine was once again relieved to see nothing out of the ordinary. Whatever had caused the nuclear winter had ejected massive amounts of dust and debris into the upper atmosphere, blotting out the sun, cooling the planet significantly and killing off most of the plant and animal life over time.

~

The small ruins that the original Away Team had discovered all those years ago had been excavated significantly, and were just the tip of the iceberg.

As the Away Team approached the co-ordinates, they were greeted by a vast expanse where Starfleet Engineers had uncovered a gigantic facility, apparently covered and overgrown across several millennia. The small ruins could be found at the tip of one of the tall towers now exposed to the elements once more.

Excavation equipment, conveyor belts and scaffolding lined the outlying areas, and it took the Away Team ten minutes to walk down the winding stairway that had be cut into the rock face and to come face-to-face with what appeared to be an entranceway into the complex. Maxine pulled the tricorder from off her hip, once more running scans of the building.

Although only a little was known of the Progenitors, the fact that they had seeded the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, and possibly the Gamma and Delta Quadrants too, led to the conclusion that they were a Galactic power. With their subsequent disappearance, only a few items had been found that could be tied back to them. The complex before them surely represented one of the biggest finds in the history of the galaxy, perhaps bigger than the Iconian gateways. So why was nothing listed on Maxine's PADD? Why had she heard nothing about this place before?

The Away Team looked at each other before entering through the doorway in front of them and into the vast complex...


====================
Lieutenant Maxine Jenna
Chief Science Officer
USS Relentless
NCC-11966
====================