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Posted on Tue May 12th, 2020 @ 7:33pm by 1st Lieutenant Douglas Collier
Edited on on Tue May 12th, 2020 @ 7:36pm

Mission: From the Sidelines
Location: Planet

As Douglas keeps brushing the tracks, he stops, wipes the sweat off his brow, and looks in the direction hes going. "Is that... trees?" He hurriedly brushes his tracks as he almost half runs to them, then stops. "Best scan the area." Tricorder beeps and whistles. "Hmm. that's odd." A life sign seemed to appear for a split second, then vanish. and another. "Must be animal life, or its dense enough for the tricorder to be unable to scan. Shit." He unholsters his blaster pistol. "Better be on guard."

This reminds him of his earlier years of training. Being tossed out. One day into a barren area, the next into a dense jungle, with the locals being less than friendly. He grins "Director Ken sure did have a funny way of teaching people. But it was effective. Gave my the stomach to execute." He hears something. Keeping calm and collected, he pressed on. "Odd that this ground seems to become sort of rocky mixed in with dense vegetation." He hears a scree, and turns in the direction of it. A primitive life form is running at him with a spear. When it gets close enough, he fires a shot. The primitive flies back, with a crater sized hole in its chest,hitting a tree hard, where it slumps down. "Power setting must be too high." He adjusts it. "That should do it." He hears more screes. A lot more. "Damn." He runs towards what he sees as a small clearing to stand his ground. Pushes through brush and grass. He begins assessing what he sees, then turns around. "Bring it." The primitives break the treeline and he begins to fire at them. They're dropping like flies. Spears whoosh past him as he cuts down a primitive that got too close while firing at another. A couple arrows manage to make its mark, one in his right shoulder, two in his left ribs, one on his left thigh. He grunts, as he continually fights them off. The whole scenario takes about 15 minutes before the primitives stop firing and sending more in to their deaths.

Douglas breathes hard, catching his breath. As he removes the arrows, painfully, he turns back around to see, what he can assume, is an outpost. Taking out the tricorder and scanning it, he finds out that this has been giving off interference, among other things. He can't properly get a scan of the interior, or its inhabitants. He then sees a spike in the energy readings that would indicate a transporter has been activated, but cant determine if someone or something is coming or going. He puts his armor activation on standby, and walks towards it. "Better find out what's in there, and if I can make contact with the locals." Rolls his eyes. "That's if they're willing to be civil."