Chapter 1: Survival instincts

[Awesomoman]

"Rodger. Follow me." He instructed the others and raced off to the bridge. "Kiruza, we need you on radar. Rucha, take the fire controls, you're not off gun duty yet." He said sitting down in the helms chair. "Computer, lock on to last saved coordinates and begin preparations for warp." The systems voice came on. "Please enter activation code." Lance had snagged the note it was written on as he had entered. He typed in the numbers. "Code confirmed... Warning. Ship is in critical condition. Warping may cause-" "I don't care just get us out of here!" He interrupted.

[Nohiki]

First hits shook the ship, but the Croatoan appeared to be faster than it's pursuers with the other engine running. "Almost there. Marine, come about! We have one opportunity to cripple them. Rucha! Can you see the ship silouette in front of you? Click the two big red blobs on the front when helm confirms! Kiruza, you then target the biggest ship you'll see!" she said the instructions.

Excluding the main gun that was primarily designed for defense, the Croatoan was also equipped with two frontal beam cannons powered directly from the engines. Ariaka didn't have the exact data, but if her preliminary calculations were close to the truth, they could be even used to bombard planets.

[Morty]

"What? But I have to tend to the-- oh, for pity's sake!" she fussed, abandoning the stretcher to snake after the marine, throwing herself into one of the helm's seats. "Ok ok... Oh, no.." she muttered as the unfamiliar controls flickered to life on the holographic control screen. Her hands dithered over the keyboard, unsure of what to press. "Computer, target enemy ship?" she asked tentatively, and mercifully the ship responded, locking on to the most imminent threat-- the massive hostile ship taking up most of the view from the dashboard.

[Zetherus]

Tal'set was struggling. The ship that was following him was starting to get on his nerves. "damn, I just heard a voice and now its gone. Mayday, mayday are you there, why are you leaving? Suddenly a rift opened and a battleship of sufficient size came from the void.

The battleship had a few federation ships following it and they didn't look friendly. "Thats it. I'm starting to feel like I'm surrounded!" The federation ships near the battle ship let lose three star fighters after Tal'set.

There was no other choice running now so Tal'set activated his battle stations and activated the ships shields and weapons. He without warning barrel-rolled and jetted downwards then using his thrusters; he aimed the nose of his jet at his opponent and sawed the one firing at him in half with his pulse machine guns. The three other star fighters began firing onto Tal'set. He used his afterburners to speed ahead of their fire. He deactivated his afterburners when he got further enough away. He was pretty close to the fleeing Croatoan that he tried to contact. The three star fighters where hot on his tail and were getting close.

[Kauria]

Rucha pulled herself into the chair eagerly, hands hovering over the display. Seems simple enough. The massive enemy dreadnought came into clear view.
"All right." She smiled, an expression more teeth than cheer, and slammed her palm on the target with perhaps more force than necessary. The Croatoan shuddered, and twin craters bloomed across the hostile ship's hull.

[Zetherus]

"Wooooo nice, good shooting stranger." Yelled Tal'set thinking the shooter would hear him. Tal'set activated his afterburners once more to get as close to the Croatoan as he could to use the ships automated weapons on his enemies behind him. As He got closer the enemy air crafts following him began firing at him but his shields were deflecting the shots. He had to do something before his shields went down so he went to regular thrusters; as he glided through space he used the same vertical thrusters like before and turned 180 degrees making him face his three opponents. "I got guns to!" Tal'set then rained hellfire on the three only taking out one of them.

The two enemy air crafts then split off two directions. One going toward the Croatoan arming some kind of bomb and the other one pulling maneuvering skills trying to flank Tal'set.

[Nohiki]

Ariaka finally made it to the bridge. She went over to Kiruza's station and quickly marked Tal'Set's ship as friendly. "Excellent job everybody! Looks like the big thing is disabled." she went over the deck and took the captain's seat. "Croatoan to unknown fighter. Follow our drones into the bay so we can get the hell outta here!"
she shouted to the mic.

Croatoan's drones flown by at inhumane speed and annihilated Tal'Set's pursuer, then assumed escort formation. Meanwhile Ariaka used the main cannon to annihilate the bomber. "Landing our birds in 20 seconds. Stardrive charged. almost there!"

Several torpedoes from the cruisers passed the ship's defenses, but the shield powered by one more engine held, even if barely. One of them hit the part where the shield was damaged, but it didn't seem to do much damage so Ariaka didn't pay attention to it. (OOC: Boarding party, yay! )

[Zetherus]

"Rodger that pulling to the airlock." Tal'set followed the drones until he reached the docking bay. He landed his ship into the docking bay and deactivated the jet's defense systems making the pulse machine guns rotate into the jet's hall.

The engines suddenly powered down making the jet's loud hissing die down to a low humming noise. Tal'set opened the cockpit causing white steam to spew out from the front and both sides. "Well, that couldn't of been much funner. By the way" ,as he grabbed the receiver, "I thought that guy was going to get away from me. Good support out there. Big ships are good for something." Tal'set jumped out of his jet equipping his guns; his sniper on his back laying horizontally, pistol on his right thigh holstered, dagger in sheath upside down on his left breast. Tal'set leaned up against his jet waiting for a greeting in this unfamiliar ship.

[Nohiki]

"They landed, stand by!" the android shouted, the interface of her chair connecting to her hands and head. Her system analyzed all the data streaming from the ships sensors. She decided that one jump wouldn't hurt the ship - too much - and given they already taken damage, she didn't want to fight 4 more ships. The Stardrive was charged and the course was clear. "JUMP!" said her voice and the ship went through the rift, emerging over a small, jungle covered planet.

Ariaka remained joined with the ship after the jump, sending a mail to all the consoles of the others that she is recharging. While that was one of the reason, it wasn't the main one. It had the same effect on her as crack would have on a living being. Being able to use all computers and sensors on the ship as if she was the ship herself was pure euphoria. Her body which she wasn't sure she occupied any longer started notyfying the crew of the data coming from the ship again.

Stardrive charged 0.1%.
Drones 6-11 refueled.
Hull breach on deck 5.
Deploying repair drones to shield emitter 3.
Sealing damaged compartments on deck 5.
Friendly fighter waiting in hangar bay.
Warning, active weapons detected in hangar.
Engine two running on 87% efficiency.
Shields charged 23%.
...

Ariaka paid no attention to it. Instead, she recalled the map she got from the unknown data after her crash. She tried to use the security cameras to see the location, but to no avail. there were supposed to be cameras in the area, but they were all offline. At first she thought it could be a power problem, but that part of the ship wasn't linked to engine 3. Somebody took care this place couldn't be found easily. She will have to go there on foot. But to do that, she'll need a repair. She stormed the ships database and found what she was looking for. First, the files of all crew members. She pulled out the currently awake surviving people and sent them their specific profiles on their monitors. They didn't say much, only name, their race, skills, and most importantly, homeland. Ariaka didn't think it would bring any memories back in them, but it might give them certain degree of comfort.

Was that compassion? Ariaka spent a few more seconds searching for her own profile. the first sign something wasn't allright was that she didn't find her entry in crew, but in inventory. Her suspicion proved correct. She was supposed to be dumb, mindless machine. Her programming should have been what she would consider a slimeball on the evolution scale. Expendable service and enforcer robot. And yet here she was, thinking, feeling emotions. She was puzzled by all this. This only made her even more determined to access the secret part of the ship. She loaded the location of spare parts in her profile and returned to her body, disentangling from the chair.

"Back." she reported. "Lance? Let me show you something, i think you're gonna like it. A LOT." she said, standing up and heading to the location she pulled out of her profile: Armory. When she reached it and opened the door, she had to whistle. It was a large room with enough weapons to take over a large city, given the men to wield them. "Sweet," She went in, looking for the parts she needed to repair herself.

[Morty]

Kiruza relaxed once the jump had occured, slumped in the navigator's seat. They were out of harm's way for now. Hopefully the jungle planet was not home to intelligent, or at least hostile, life. Her spines twitched as a ding! sounded from her communication device, and she fiddled around with it until she was able to open the file. It was her personal profile; her name, her age, her race. But it didn't say anything about her history. It merely said she was a cryogenics specialist aboard the Croatoan, and that she had lived on the planet Katisun, in the solar-system of Atika. (The Shis name everything from the planet to their local group of galaxies.) She selected the planet's highlighted name and received a description. The brief but succint record made her blood run cold.

Katisun.
Coordinates (X1018, Y16, Z1120)
Status: Destroyed.

Kiruza remained slumped in the chair, closing the device heavily. She paused for several moments, the thoughts trickling doing very little to comfort her. She didn't even remember the planet's surface, or what it was like. Briefly she had a flash of clinging to a coral reef while the current swept through her spines, the twilight of the tropical sea and the coolness of the salty air as she surfaced, but that was all. She briefly glanced at Ariaka as the latter left her chair. She assumed she was the one to have sent her the file. She was thankful, but it was still rather jarring to know that she would never get to see the place where she grew up. She wondered if she had had friends there. How had it been destroyed?
Suddenly she remembered the patient she was supposed to attend to. She slinked out of the control room and opted to relocate the lanky alien. It would take her mind off the unwanted revelation. The others could deal with the jet pilot.

[Midnightmoon]

Aside from breaking open the mechanics core he couldn't figure out what to do. "Though, considering the state of the place I might need the help." He murmured, and was debating with himself on if to do the act when other creatures came in. The light from the other side of the door made him wince and close his eyes while the door was open. There was sounds that sounded familiar but he couldn't understand. Then he felt the robot get up. "Must have rebooted on it's own." Then more things started to shake and everyone left in a hurry, and he didn't like their tone that accompanied their next string of sounds. He tried to follow them seeing as they knew what to do, but he couldn't get past the door frame. The it occurred to him, what did they know? "Shouldn't I know it too?" Then another realization hit him; everything was familiar but he didn't know anything. "I can't even remember my own name!" The thing on his wrist bleep-bip-ed again. <<NAME WHAT?>>
"Ummm..." He said, bringing his left arm up and looking at the screen now blinking with a soft blue-ish glow.
<<INVALID. NAME WHAT?>>
"Ehh, name ship." He responded hesitantly. Had to start somewhere.
<<SHIP NAME: CROATOAN>>
"Well that's helpful. Maybe it knows something about me... eh, access personal data." This time it made no noise but a form popped up with his headshot at the top (-which he was sure it was his). "Le-hila's me eh." Using a claw he gently scrolled down the screen. Near the bottom was a list of required equipment that he was to have to work efficiently. "Guess that's for the commanders to know... L3-Lazer, that must be this thing." He looked at the black batton thing he had picked up. Clicking the item he read that it was used for many different uses, such as soldering and cutting. Clicking back to the main form he continued reading the list, "...C8-Dims Goggles, now those I'm sure are important. So if this thing was near that pod then these must be too." When he went back to look for them he found them a few feet away from the pod. Lee picked them up and found he had no trouble remembering how to put them on. The goggles were like a tinted round goggles up from while everything else was a durable plastic that he clipped together at the back. The strange thing was that there were weird things attacked to them that lined up with his ears. He didn't put them in. Then finally he stepped out of the demolished room with the corpse. "Maybe if I have the time later I could figure out who she was."

[Morty]

Kiruza found her way back to the dimly lit hall, retrieving the stretcher with the equipment in it. She pushed along until to her surprise, the person she was looking for found her instead.
"Hello." she said, pushing the cart to the side to greet the newcomer. "Do your remember your name?"
She recognized the room he had come out of as the one where Ariaka had gone unresponsive for a time.

[Awesomoman]

Lance stayed in his seat and watched as the ship jumped. He could feel it move at unimaginable speed and then stop as if it were nothing. He sighed with relief then stood up, he was going to check on the new arrival when a small letter appeared in the left corner of his HUD. Just by thinking "open" the letter opened up and showed what was sent, his profile. A Lieutenant of the New Earth Empire he was head of security aboard the Croatoan. He had realized he was part of the empire, But reading it was what made him realize something. This didn't seem like an Imperial ship, why was he guarding it? What was so important that the Empire would put him in charge of it? He reread his profile over and over but couldn't find anything. What ever it was about this ship it was obviously kept secret, but not well enough if they were attacked. Come to think of it, that would also explain why he was still awake while everyone else was in the cryo chambers. There was something of great importance about or on this ship and it was his duty to guard it, all he had to do now was find it. "Lance," Ariaka called him. He closed his profile and decided he would look into it further after they weren't in danger. She lead him to the armory, behind his helmet was a big smile. "You're right, i do like this." He walked in and grabbed an H9-40 Heavy Machine Gun. The latest from Ryon Tech these babies are capable of ripping through flesh, armor, steel, any sort of cover. Even shields don't last very long under fire from one, and for a machine gun its accuracy was actually pretty good. Its weight however was several hundred pounds, not including the ammo. Lance snapped the massive clip in, then lifted the gun and laughed. "I have no memory about myself, but i can tell you the recoil of this gun is a bitch."

[Kauria]

Rucha leaned back as her file appeared, taking a quick glance at what she could see of the other crew members. She glanced down the little text there was, most of which she had already learned.
No surprises regarding name and species. Fortunately.
"As requested, subject's partial myopia has been left untreated. Training has been adjusted to compensate."
She blinked and decided to ask the medic as soon as possible if myopia happened to be life-threatening.
In addition to being able to shoot, the file listed a number of skills that seemed to have little relevance to being a crew member. Computers, scouting, explosives . . . Rucha almost laughed. It was ridiculous to think that she could ever know anything about these. Apparently, some things were less ingrained than others. In addition, most of them seemed to be talents easily overshadowed by her crewmates. All of them were undoubtedly better with computers, and she had little doubt that the marine knew how to fire a gun if he had one.
Her eyes drifted down to her "home" information. The Fel Caldas colony, an oversized space station in the Licarius system. She was a spaceborn. Given that she had no idea where either station or system was, it was simply an inviting and entirely useless snippet of information.
. . . Still, it was a name. She had a home.
And at the very bottom, there was a photograph. Of her.
Rucha touched her face instinctively. Apart from a few distorted glimpses across the glassy stasis pods, she hadn't seen her reflection. She traced her head plates with one finger, felt the ridges match those of the Ceretai in the image. Their brown eyes met. Although the gray face appeared mostly expressionless, there was something in the piercing gaze that unsettled her.
Was that the look of someone who could remember her entire life?
"Computer, show me what I look like." She winced at her unprofessional-sounding choice of words, but a second image appeared, showing the Rucha that sat in front of the screen. Their eyes may have been the same color, but the emotions in them could scarcely have been more different.
Rucha lifted her hand off the keyboard and turned it, clenching and unclenching her fingers thoughtfully. She was the only living member of her species she had seen on the ship, and it was impossible to judge her size or fitness from that alone. She made a mental note to find or at least ask for the profiles of as many of the other passengers as she could.
For now, there was still a stranger in the hangar.
She pushed herself away from the terminal, stood, and walked away, pistol held loosely in her left hand.

The file remained open on the screen.

[Nohiki]

Ariaka finally reached the android storage. She went in and located the other constructs. She resisted the urge to activate them. They were not like her. She pulled a steel bench closer to the other robots and sat down. She hooked herself up to diagnostics computer. Aside from damage she already knew about, the machine reported hairline fractures in her elbow and the extreme power consumption caused by her neural network being much more advanced.

She found another construct in her color and simply detached it's and her arm, switching the two as a whole. "Score two for robots. Easy maintenance. Show me an organic life form that can perform surgery like that on itself." she said. Sitting down, her fingertips opening, revealing set of tools. She started dismantling armor on her leg, slowly working her way towards the servo in her knee. She couldn't replace her leg as easily as the arm, as it had to be built to withstand more pressure. When she was almost done, she remembered she probably should have pulled out the spare part first. She cursed and tried to reach the other body, falling off the bench and her dismantled leg falling off. Cursing again, she pulled herself together (literally) and started disassembling the other leg. When she was done, she tested the servo by moving to maximum angles and standing on one leg. All seemed to be working properly.

Then she went and browsed through the regals, finding a small brown bottle. She looked at in with almost love. Armor polish. The past two days, she noticed, made her a lot less shiny with all the explosions and damage going on. She sat down again, finding a piece of cloth and starting to remove her armor.