Crisis on Cressida, Part 2

As the evacuation was underway, Lt. Cohnson asked one of his new Klingon friends about the circumstances leading to the crisis. The Klingons described a spatial anomaly that appeared beneath the city only hours ago, from which came a host of the creatures that the crew first encountered on beam-in. The creatures immediately began rampaging throughout the city structure, devouring inorganic matter and threatening residents who stood in their way. The ship’s sensors confirmed the presence of an anomaly, determining that it is a trimetric fracture, a breach in the spacetime continuum which allows matter to pass between dimensions. At present no more creatures were emerging and the anomaly appeared to be passively closing. The Captain spoke to City Administrator Veda Damaad who confirmed the Klingons’ description of the anomaly emitting thousands of the creatures onto the city. The creatures immediately started consuming parts of the city’s structure and systems, sending it into the decaying state and orbit you now find it in. The only recent out of the ordinary occurrence she can recall is the arrival of a Nausicaan archeologist who has been studying the native Kizoman population. The conversation is interrupted by more tremors and a call from the ship informing the Captain that the degradation of the city superstructure has accelerated faster than originally projected, moving the estimated time til collapse from five to two hours.

Lt. Hagen used her expertise in transporter systems to increase the speed of evacuation by setting up a system to store more evacuees’ patterns in the transport buffer using a unique, experimental particle found on a previous mission.

Captain Ral and Lt. Cohnson headed to the sub-level below the central plaza in search of the Nausicaan archaeologist, only to encounter a pair of the creatures devouring the support columns. Despite a missed phaser blast from the security chief obliterating one of the columns, they were able to stun and incapacitate the creatures before they did any further harm. As the evacuees began to resume their orderly exit, they heard a horrible tearing and screeching sound while the ground moved with enough force to knock everyone off their feet. One of the domes — a full third of the city — broke off and began slowly collapsing into the crushing depths of the planet’s atmosphere.

Captain's Log

Supplemental: We have begun the evacuation of Cressida on Kizomic VI; however, the invasive species causing structural failure throughout the city has proven to be notably resilient as well as effective. In a sudden and shocking event, one large section of the city's structure has broken away completely.

The falling district was moving too quickly through the dense atmosphere to get a transporter lock from the Hanesawa, and sensors indicated 10 life-signs gathered near one of the transport tubes. The crew decided that the best course of action would be sending a shuttlecraft to quickly evacuate them, crewed by only a pilot and co-pilot to ensure room for all the civilians. After some daring flying, with Lt. Hagen ensuring the shuttle’s engines were able to keep up with Lt. Cohnson’s Flight Control Systems expertise, they landed the shuttle safely only taking minor damage to one of the thruster systems, for which Lt. Hagen was able to jury-rig a repair. The team made their way to the stranded evacuees and found three with critical injuries. Two were successfully stabilized, but one was too badly injured to treat in the field. The nine remaining evacuees were helped by the Lieutenants back to the shuttle, which safely escaped the atmosphere as the city district was enveloped and crushed.

Back at the city center, the Captain was approached by Administrator Damaad, who thanked the crew for their efforts but was now requesting dedicated access to one of the transporters. The Nausicaan archaeologist — named Urotoxa — angrily interjected that the Administrator’s selfish request would come at the expense of the indigenous Kizomans in the fluid strata of the planet below who were being attacked by the same creatures that came through the trimetric fracture. She requested that the crew instead provide the Kizomans with weapons to defend themselves. The Kizomans live in the corrosive liquid hydrogen/chlorine atmosphere layer and are a pre-industrial agrarian society, falling under the purview of the Prime Directive, though Urotoxa had been studying them in person for weeks and they were aware of Cressida through its atmospheric mining operations. Administrator Damaad waved away Urotoxa’s concerns about “those savages” as irrelevant and offered to owe the Hanesawa crew a personal favor if they helped with her request, as she is a very well-connected person across the galaxy. The Captain rejected her outright since it would hamper the now severely time-crunched evacuation effort, certainly preventing a full evacuation. Suspecting that Urotoxa was not being entirely forthcoming, Lt. Hagen used her telepathic abilities to read her thoughts and discover that while she did truly care about the native Kizomans and wanted to help them, she also expressly did not want the Hanesawa crew to visit the planet and discover something she is hiding. The Captain decided that he could not in good conscience provide weapons to the Kizomans.

The evacuation continues.