Commander Kael finished her pre mission inspection of the environment suits given out by supply. She made sure they sealed effectively, had sufficient power and the built in comm suite worked.  While she did that, Mr. Vossk checked the shuttle with help from the captain’s younger brother Daniel. What she understood Danny was incredibly smart and gifted wit a mind with few rivals for science. But his social skills were somewhat lacking.

Mr. Vossk had chosen Daniel as an opportunity to get some more time in the field away from the labs. Based on his assignment to the Stellar sciences labs on deck 9, Mr. Rain had rarely left his post, often pouring himself into research and data collation. Lorena had to admit, the young officer’s mind was able to step back and see patterns in stellar phenomena that even the computers could miss, making him an excellent choice given the nature of the mission.

Once the crew completed their tasks they signaled all clear for departure. Everyone loaded into the shuttle and Lorena settled into the pilots seat, with Vossk copiloting and Daniel at an assistant console operating the sensor array. Lorena went through the pre flight checklist with Mr. Vossk who meticulously checked each box. She appreciated his data driven approach in this instance as she liked being thorough. Daniel for his part seemed to be done with the sensors already.

“Are the sensor checks finished Mr. Rain?” She asked.

Daniel glanced over as if only just noticing she was sitting there.

“Items 1-12 b are go. I was doing some calibrating to account for large concentrations of Einstein-Hawking Radiation we’re likely to encounter as we draw near the chronal anomaly.”

Lorena had thought to rebuke him for his lack of voicing the complete inspection but Mr. Vossk turned slightly and nodded, clearly accustomed to Daniel’s silent efficiency.

”Excellent foresight Mr. Rain. The radiation levels could easily wash out the basic configuration scans and make readings difficult to parse. This way we’ll obtain reliable readings.”

Lorena frowned and nodded. Vossk knew his staff and it wasn’t right of her to have expectations of his performance given they’d never worked together before. That however didn’t mean adjustments were out of the question.

”Going forward Mr. Rain, if you could vocalize completion of your checklists aloud for me it’ll help keep a running tally of where we stand operationally.”

Daniel nodded slightly from his fevered inputs at his console.

“Understood.”

She took that as enough for now. Once everything was checked and co firmed good to go, she began launch procedures and got the shuttle underway. It lifted off the deck gently and proceeded forward towards the blue energy curtain of the force field holding back the atmosphere inside the shuttle bay.

Once outside the ship she banked gently and plotted an approach path towards their landing zone on Theta Arnor Psi. The mission was simple. Land and study what happened. Determine if the anomaly was artificial or a spontaneous natural phenomenon. Most of the crew had doubts, but good field work wasn’t done based on doubts, it was based on facts. Behind them the Rubidoux held its position in orbit. Shrinking ever so steadily as the planet loomed larger to them.

The ride was steady enough and she gave the spatial anomaly a wide breadth. Not wanting to tempt fate getting caught in its effects. Even now she could see the sensor id ping from their probe bouncing back and forth from entry to mid traversal and back endlessly. Like it was forever trapped in a loop of several seconds.

The shuttle touched down into the atmosphere such as it was, being barely present at all. The landing on the surface was one of her gentlest, thanks in part to the lack of environmental effects.

“Let’s suit up, then we’ll do a quick survey and start taking samples and readings.”

Affirmatives came from the other members of the away team. Once everyone got their suits on, they approached the hatch of the shuttle and began the depressurization process so it could lower. Ahead of them lay a mostly barren landscape. The soil was largely arid and light beige. Large patches of powder indicated intense erosion.

Above the sky was a thin blue as the trace amounts of nitrogen and oxygen scattered some of the light from the nearby stars. Initial tricorder scans gave them little to work with they wouldn’t be able to discern from a visual inspection. Lorena glanced around trying to judge if a spiral scan or starburst scan would better serve them. She wanted to balance speed with data collection.

Vossk and Rain worked their tools feverishly, systems chiming and beeping as they worked. She realized at this point it was their mission now. She was just along to supervise and guide. Vossk turned to Daniel and gave him some instruction that Lorena couldn’t make out. The suit speakers weren’t the best.

The biggest task for Vossk to overcome would be getting accurate readings through the chronal radiation of the nearby anomaly. To that task, Vossk ordered the deployment of several pattern enhancers. The idea was to use the enhancers to boost the output of their tricorders. Once Lt. Rain finished the setup and activation of the last beacon, Lt. Vossk began to run his scans.

Time seemed to drag to a halt for Lorena while she waited. She was more of a doer than a waiter. But since there wasn’t much for her to do she found herself feeling useless. She wanted to fix that.

“I know science is one of my weaker subjects when you set me next to you two.”  She started. “But I feel like a third wheel holding us back. How can I help?”

Vossk frowned, an u characteristic gesture from  Saurian that revealed his pointed teeth slightly.

“You can collate and feed the data collected to Lt. Rain for study. It will require less expertise on your part in the field of science and compensate for Mr. Rain’s casual dalliances with organization.”

Lorena almost chuckled but the two men both had stone cold serious faces on. That had sounded like a joke, but neither man laughed. They were either really good poker or absolutely devoid of humor. Both prospects gave her pause.

Turning her focus to the work assigned to her, she studied the incoming data feeds. While she didn’t understand much of what she was looking at, finding patterns in the data with which she could group and collate it for study was simple enough and a skill that came naturally to her. She tabbed everything based on scan data codes and passed it on to Mr. Rain whose job was dissection of said data while Vossk handled the actually collection itself.

Lorena found that the pair worked well aside from the fact that Daniel seemed to be somewhat bored. She’d been told that was just how he presented himself according to the captain. Being Tiberius’ younger brother, Daniel was something of a warp field savant. But astrophysics was a field he could rewrite the book on if he’d sit down and listen to any of the leaders in the field urging him to do so. A task he had no interest in doing. What exactly did interest him was an enigma to all, including Captain Rain himself.

The assignment to the away mission did pull him free of his lab though and Tib was convinced that would be good for him. She had to admit he poured himself into the data the more it fell in from their sensor grid. Before it was done, she noted a concerning sign from Daniel’s expression. His brow was creased with concern.

”I know what happened, and what’s happening. A chroniton Fragmentation Array was fired here. But it appears whoever used it didn’t know how. The effect is… unique. The chronitons that do exist here are in a state of flux. However leaving the atmosphere resets them.”

”Meaning as soon as we leave the planet, time for us will reset to before we landed.” Vossk concluded.

“The only factor I can’t determine is if the effect will be localized to our memories or physically as well.” Daniel said.

“A lack of bodies or hardware might indicate a memory effect. An unknown party came here to test their weapon. Fell under its effects unawares, packed their technology up and departed.” Vossk said aloud.

“A valid hypothesis. It’s reasonable to assume the weapon and the party responsible have left the system. It may be possible to track them based on a unique chroniton radiation leak. I believe the weapon may be damaged and we can track it based on this fact.”

“If we’re going to forget everything I want detailed logs recorded and filed for playback as soon as we exit the planet’s atmosphere.” Lorena said.

She’d read plenty of mission reports detailing memory loss and how the crew tackled it. In some cases they left hints for themselves. Others discovered patterns across causal loops. Here she wanted nothing left to chance. She’d had the team file reports and transmitted them back to the ship.

“Can we tell if the Rubi received the data and reports?” Lorena asked.

“Unknown. We’ll have to hope they did, or at worst, hope that our reports and files remain intact once we leave the surface.”

Lorena nodded. “Finish your scans and see if you can conclude anything with more certainty. Guessing is good, but I’d prefer we work in hard facts.” Lorena said, getting an approving nod from Vossk.

Daniel finished going over the data and confirmed as best he could with the resources on hand that his hypothesis was correct. They would at minimum lose their memory of landing and running tests in the surface of the planet thanks to the bizarre radiation and ruination of the ambient chronitons on the surface. Leaving would effectively reset their memory.

Lorena then had them break down their gear and stow it in the shuttle. Afterward they boarded the shuttle and took off, doing a lazy orbit of the planet while making use of the onboard sensor suite to run more scans. Vossk gave his console a nod after Daniel ran some analysis on the data.

“Commander, it would appear the anomaly in orbit is in fact the intended effect of the weapon. It exists in a state of slower chronal decay than average. With a half life like that of much other forms of exotic matter. We could run several benchmark scans to determine the rate of decay but we’ll need the sensor pods on the ship. The tools we have here are just not finite enough.”

Lorena nodded, handling the piloting duties again while the scientists did their work.

“Okay. I’m going to recommend we place the planet under quarantine. We’ll have the ship deploy warning beacons around the system.”

She opened a channel back to the ship. But the chronal interference was acting up with the line. “Shuttlecraft St. Louis to USS Rubidoux, we’re plotting a return course. It expect difficulties. I recommend we place this solar system under quarantine for the time being due to the dangerously unpredictable chroniton fields pervading the planet and its solar system.”

The message was marked as sent, but there was a system confirmation error which didn’t usually occur. Lorena formed, mentally filing that away to deal with later. Right now she needed to focus on avoiding the worst of the anomaly. As the St. Louis rose through the too thin atmosphere, it was bathed in the void of space before long and angled gracefully towards the Rubidoux in the distance. The ship waited like a parent on its child to return from a day full of play in the woods.

It came about slowly and slipped into the shuttle bay beyond the gentle blue force field holding in the atmosphere inside. Lorena maneuvered to their designated position and settled down for a smooth and perfect landing.