Nitala and the others exited the shuttle and began to walk toward where her tricorder was telling them to go. “My tricorder is picking up some pieces buried deep in that pile of snow and ice. We are going to have to dig it out,” Nitala said as she looked at the others. Though they were bundled up she could still feel the coldness, her face was slightly turning red.

“Once we free them we need to get any technology that we don’t want falling into the wrong hands and brought back to the ship.” She stated remembering what the orders had said.

Tav’s face was completely covered. Every inch of his skin was covered. He liked winter… kind of? But the cold wind was unrelenting, constantly blasting him with snow, and that was unenjoyable by anyone. Except maybe the Breen. “Now that’s a thought I don’t need to mull on,” Tav muttered. Breen AND Borg. Undesirable.

Talibah followed the rest of the team as a decision was made on where to dig. Something had her on edge, the hairs on the back of her neck were stiff. Shaking it off as just the cold and being on an unknown moon. “Any idea on what we are looking for?” as she started to dig in with her shovel working the area that the others had indicated.

 Checking his tricorder, Tav noted the estimated depth of the tech inside the snowdrift, as well as the ice composition. “Man, I’d love to skip the shovel and just use a low-power phaser blast… but since we don’t know how much tech is exposed, I don’t want to risk damaging whatever remains.” Tav unfolded his shovel, and with a heavy sigh, began to dig. 10 minutes later, the first glint of cold black metal peaked out from the snow. 

Jacoby scanned the drift with his Tricorder.  He re-ran the scan back scan.  While the storm was pretty heavy, it had been relatively calm in this area the last month.  A couple of windy days but nothing like they were experiencing now.  “This storm kicked up last night.  The snow is soft, I don’t think this has been here as long as we think, whatever it is!” Jacoby grabbed his shovel and continued to dig.

Jeden sighed loudly as she saw the first bit of hull from the cube appear, “Shoveling a walkway is one thing but this…” She let the rest of the sentence hang in the air as she moved another load of snow away from the fragment. As she did she felt the snow shift under her slightly, a second before it collapsed away from the fragment dragging her down into the darkness below and out of sight with a high-pitched shriek of surprise. A moment later the the ground settled revealing a 3-meter wide hole leading down into the darkness below.

Nitala moved closer as Jeden seemed to have fallen, “are you ok?” she said in a high-pitched voice as her heart began to pump blood through her body with adrenaline, which seemed to warm her up a bit.

Jeden blinked and pushed herself up onto all fours as the snow that partially buried her fell around her. “Think so,” she said, “Just a little dazed.”

“What do you see down there?” She asked.

“One sec,” Jeden said as she slowly stood up and looked around her, the light from her helmet illuminated her view and cast long ominous shadows all around her. Before she was a large section of the hull of the cube that had created the snow cavern she found herself in. “There is a chuck of the hull down here, the snow must have drifted to create this cavern. I don’t see any lights. This could be what we are after.”

Tav peered down into the darkness with a mixture of shock and fear. Jeden had disappeared so quickly, that Tav hadn’t even had a chance to reach out and grab her! He quickly pulled off his pack and started digging around. He didn’t have any rope, but he might have some spare electro-plasma conduit, that was flexible and strong enough to hold a human’s weight. Looking up at the others, Tav asked “Should we go down, or just bring her up?”

“Jacoby scanned, there are no life signs.  Nothing biological, and nothing powered on except what we were picking up.  I mean we did just spend all this time digging, I’m not sticking up here.” He said making his way down into the hole.  

Tav quietly repeated Jacoby’s words over and over in his head. “No life signs. No life signs. No life signs.” Swallowing in an attempt to clear the lump in his throat, Tav did his best to steel himself and looked up at Nitala. “I’m trying to think of something witty to say to make myself feel better, but I’ve got nothing. I guess there’s nothing to do but get to it, yeah?” Tav wiped the snow from his goggles and followed Jacoby into the cold, metal pit.

Talibah looked down into the hole that Jeden had just fallen into and then making up her mind she started to look for a way that she could climb down. “Jeden, I’m on my way. Just give me a second to make my way down to you.” as she looked at the rest of the team. “I’m going down.”

Jeden cast her eyes upwards to the entrance to her private little snow cavern, “Sounds good, all this borg wreckage does not make it creepy or anything.”

“I’ll remain up here if you guys want to start recovering any technology that we don’t want falling into the wrong hands to be brought onboard the shuttle.” Nitala said as she looked at both Talibah and Jeden, “Tav if you want to go down there and help them while Jacoby stays up here helping me?” 

Jeden nodded and said, “Works for me,” before turning back to the wreckage and grabbing her shoving. Surveying the site before her she absently mused to her, ‘Now, if I was some fancy borg tech, where would I be hiding?’ Without a further thought she took a few steps towards a modestly sized mound of buried in the snow, ‘Maybe here?’

Tav opened his eyes after his feet touched down next to Jeden. He hadn’t even realized he had closed them during the climb down into the pit. Tav quickly glanced at his companions to see if they had noticed, but if they did, nobody said anything. Opening his tricorder, he aimed it into the dark hull opening and waited for a readout before stepping forward. Jacoby had already reported no life signs or power, so now Tav was just trying to identify anything in the wreckage. If this were a Starfleet vessel, many components would be identifiable on sight. Heck, he could probably identify standard components from half a dozen different races’ vessels. But Borg tech? Hard to isolate one mass of black metal and tubes from another without a little electronic assistance.