"OK calm down," the Chief Science Officer scolded, causing Riley to rein in her fear a bit. No need to make a fool of herself on her first ever offworld venture. "Yes, bad choice of words on my part about the Nidhogg but take a breath." Inhaling, then releasing it, she had to admit it did make her feel a bit better. She couldn't help but wonder if he was speaking from experience.

"One, check your scans. No lifeforms aboard." Looking down at her scanner, she switch it to a different scanning setting, from energy to lifesigns. Oh, hey! Look at that! See, nothing to worry about. For a moment, she felt a little surge of relief. That almost, finger numbing sense of tingly relief. Almost to the point that she did not realize he was leading her towards the hatch. "Two, we all have weapons to protect ourselves if something crazy happens." With that, she felt kind of silly for her earlier comment. Yes, in order to be admitted to the program, she had to undergo basic handgun training. It was another one of those things she had to get used to. Before this, she had never fired a gun, aside from a flare gun. And as if that didn't make her feel small enough, Ian added, "And three, this is the job if you can't handle this then head on back to Earth and stop wasting my time, thank you."

Stopping right where she stood, she looked at Ian who didn't seem to care much about how he just came off. Her brows knit together in a mix of disgust and hurt. 'Well, excuuuuuse me if I don't want to be the first to touch the creepy, alien spacecraft!' she thought, unable to voice her outrage. It had always been a shortfall of hers. She needed to learn to stand up for herself. Back at NASA, she was a pretty girl...compared to the other stereotypical, astrophysicist weirdos, so she never really had anyone to pick on her over anything, except her size. Luckily, Ethan spoke up.

"Why don't you take it easy on her? Riley's new to this; don't you remember how terrifying all this is?" Ahhhh, so boss-man did used to be scared of this! It made her feel a little bit better on the inside. Ethan guided her away from the hatch and handed her the handgun from her holster. "You guys should probably stand back, just incase. It's not like we know what this thing is actually doing. Going up and just opening it may not have been the best idea, but Wright's in charge."

"Really, I had no idea," RJ replied with her own sarcastic mutter, brooding just next to Ethan and watching as he moved closer to the craft with Ian. Standing over by Troy, who seemed to tower over her (though most people did, its just his whole 'military' appearance added to it). Not to mention, his gun was much, much bigger than the one she held. That was some comfort.

"I don't have a good feeling about this..." she murmured, keeping her gun lowered, safety on. In her other hand, she monitored the scanner. She knew now that many aliens had many different properties, including flesh eating and being generally frightening. She couldn't help but wonder...was hibernation among their many features?

Troy stood silent as Ian explained to him the horrors of the Nidhogg species. "Brilliant," he muttered to himself, taking a few steps closer to the vessel. Right not this crashed heap of space junk was the only clue they had in solving the medical mystery that was affected the people of this planet, and like it or not they were sooner rather than later going to have to open the vessel up and see what it was inside. While there may be some of those nasty bugs waiting inside to tear them limb from limb, there might also be the cause and cure of the illness. The rewards were worth the risk.

"I'll check it out," the Colonel announced, flicking the safety off the weapon and moving carefully toward the ship. Ian moved up with him, and when Troy dragged open the hatch the scientists peered inside with his flashlight. "No bugs yet," Troy said quietly, stepping into the hallway heading to the bridge. "Dr. Jaarsveld which you like to come along," Ian suggested when he saw the alien texts written on the walls and control panels of the ship.

Weapon ready, Troy moved slowly forward through the ship, clearing each room and hallway as he went. Using the light on the side of his rifle he scanned the darkened room, and while he was glad they hadn't yet run into any Nidhogg he imagined that would all soon change. He approached the doorway to bridge and paused for a moment, listening for noises. When all was silent he swung the door open and stepped inside.

He saw two bugs at the controls of the ship and raised his rifle, but didn't fire when he noticed both were death. The front's of their bug-like heads were smashed in; they must had head butted the bulkhead when they crashed and died from head injured. Their bodies were starting to break down, and it looked as though they'd been here for a couple of weeks. "Got something in here," he called to Ian and Jahzara.

With being thrown into the cave of illness, it wasn’t too long before he found himself holding a blood kit and scanner, after Charlie replied to his motion to help with a single word.
"Awesome.”

Pulling off her glove, the medically inclined civilian revealed a wound on her hand, which resembled that of the skin-issued natives. He fought a frown across his features, before forcing himself not to look. This was a bad sign. It wasn’t something that was over time – but spreading. So much for the slight hope that they were drinking dirty water…

"We should get samples from a couple of the locals, all team members who got sent down first, and you new guys. You have the least chance of being infected. Then we can compare and see if anything weird flags up. Should probably get a couple people started on basic antibiotics, too, to see if it's something they can clear up,” she explained, causing the Major to nod, as he wrapped a tourniquet around his own arm. Honestly…he had extracted his blood far too many times. Before he was in the environment too long, it simply made sense to take the blood asap. With a tube filled with his blood, the Major kept the blood on hand, before muttering, “Where’s my cookie and orange juice?” under his breath, in his normal British accent, with a smile.

As Will worked his way over to a nearly skinless native, he peered over his shoulder to see a highly tattooed and pierced child, asking Charlie what she had figured out, "I was thinking we could use the basic facilities on that but since we have a lab kit, we should be able to do something more in depth. Can you grab a blood kit and test the rest of the team?"

His attention was pulled away by a local that had grabbed onto his arm – horror causing their eyelids to pull away from their eyes.
“It hurts…”

Their nails began to dig into O’Malley’s arm, until he mildly violently pulled his arm back, shaking it slightly. The indentation from their nails slowly turned red. Awesome. Blood. Now he was infected [most likely]. Bloody brilliant.

“Frakkin’…” he began, taking an odd amount of joy taking their blood. It was never a good sign when it was therapeutic to stab someone with a needle.

"Remind me to not be a doctor after this," Charlie muttered, as she set off to test people around the cave as well.

“Only if you remind me not to come back if I’m nice and comfortable at home,” he smiled, his accent slurring slightly as he concentrated on keeping the pain to the infected the lowest amount possible.

After taking a few samples, he scanned and tested them, before taking another sample from himself – though he made sure it was only enough. No sense in making himself pass out.

His radio buzzed to life.
-Doctor Wright, Ethan and I found a pod that is oozing some...some really gross goo stuff. We're going to gather samples of it and take it back to the medical team to see if they can confirm anything. Do you know if they're on this channel? Because we may want them to go ahead and gather their own samples of the water in the caves to compare to this...stuff.-
"We here you," Will spoke into his radio, "We already have someone headed towards you to take blood samples."