The hallway continued straight for a short time, with no branches, so it was a foregone conclusion which direction Xoritsa had gone.  The bootprints were spaced out in a way consistent with someone running, but oddly there was no evidence of what had caused Xoritsa’s seemingly-panicked flight; given Vezda faculties in influencing the minds of those they conquered but did not possess, though, this really wasn’t surprising, especially if Jenkins was right and one of Xoritsa’s scans had triggered something.

Rounding a corner, Lotharys stopped suddenly as the floor dropped away before her.  “Careful, we’ve got a collapse here,” she said, creeping up to the edge and looking over and down.

The bootprints led directly to the hole, which was too wide to jump; running hard and fast, it was likely that Xoritsa hadn’t seen it, and had fallen in.  Thus, Lotharys shined her light down, looking for areas where someone falling in may have come to rest.  The hole was not seriously deep – twenty, maybe thirty feet – so it was possible that Xoritsa may have survived the fall, yet the beam of light found nobody, living or dead.  It did, though, glint off of something metal at the bottom.  “We need to get down there,” Lotharys said, a knot forming in the pit of her stomach.

Fortunately, Silis had a monofilament rope, so setting up a simple rappelling line was simple.  Silis and another security officer went down first, followed by Lotharys herself, then Jenkins and the remaining two security.  Lotharys quickly found the object that had glinted in her light, and her heart sank as she picked it up and showed it to Jenkins: a Starfleet combadge, broken as if by repeated impacts with a rock.

“He’s not here…” Jenkins said as he scanned around the relatively small chamber that had seemingly been hewn right out of the bedrock. The floor was made of silty sand that made a firm base,

Examining the area, it became quickly apparent that this wasn’t just a pit, but some sort of chamber with a tunnel at each end; elements of it were natural, but others suggested some sort of artifice or crafting.  There were footprints down here, too.  However, they were not from Starfleet boots; they actually appeared to be Dergan, but some were deeper than a Dergan’s footprints should be, as though whoever left them was carrying a heavy load.  Oddly, though, these deeper footprints did not appear to be hampered by the load – Xoritsa, Lotharys assumed, being carried by this mystery Dergan – which made little sense to the Trill lieutenant.

“More hoof prints there and there Lt. Both heading off that same direction. These could be older prints, too, judging by some of the natural erosion around the edges.” Deroy said.

Lotharys nodded.  “These look pretty new, though,” she replied, pointing at the deeper set.  “Let’s stick together,” she said.  She then nodded in the direction of the footprints.  “This way,” she finished simply.

The group followed the footprints for some minutes.  Eventually, though, they vanished.  When their disappearance was observed, Lotharys stopped the team, and they started to look around; however, in this area there did not appear to be any intersecting tunnels, or anything that might suggest another passageway.

It was a dead end. And the hoof prints just stopped.

“The orientation of the prints suggest they were just looking at that far end wall. Don’t stand right on or near them. This is creepy as fuck.” Jenkins offered.

Lotharys nodded, sighing sadly as she turned to Jenkins.  “Call all research teams back to camp, and let’s get some security teams down here.  The Dergans should be here in a couple of days, so that’s how long we have to search; hopefully we’ll be able to find him.”

“Yes ma’am.” Jenkins replied, though he wasn’t holding out much hope for the the lost crewman. Obviously whoever, or whatever him had some sinister motives.

With that, there was nothing more that the team could do at this time.  Lotharys brought them back to camp, to which the other research teams that were in the complex had already begun to return.  Many were upset at having their work interrupted, but understood when the situation was explained to them.  Over the next two days, multiple security teams went into the complex, and what was increasingly looking to be a tunnel network beneath it, but while they found other, older Dergan footprints, there was no further evidence of the missing crewman.