Chapter 5: Lost and stranded

[Nohiki]

Ten short beeps echoed through the bridge. After long two minutes, lights went back on through the ship and everything floating slammed to the ground, Ariaka included. The hit seemed to kick the Android into rebooting once again. She rolled on her back: "OOooow my head........ 'The hell i'm saying?"¨She looked around and her mouth swung open at the damage report she received. She gasped, sitting up, one of her hand checkig the bruise on her cheek, while she was staring on her destroyed, immobile leg. The sound she was making wasn't far from weeping. "How did i gat here? Weren't we in the hangar?" she asked, the confusion making her temporary oblivious to how badly she was hurt.

[Awesomoman]

The ship had gone into warp while lance was was mid run. Without time to brace himself he was thrown back into a door, or should a say through the door to an elevator shaft. Before he knew it, Lance was falling several floors. For a second, the gravity stopped keeping him from falling the full distance, but it came back on before he could push himself back up. The ground wasn't much farther down.

Lance found himself in complete darkness, none of the lights seemed to be working. Lance turned on his com, "Ariaka, what happened?" "skksshhhhhhh." There was nothing but static. "Ariaka, can you read me?" "skksshhhhhhh." He tried other channels. "Rucha? Tal'Set? Anyone?" Nothing. It was as if something was blocking his signal. "Computer, activate lights." High powered lights on the side of his helmet switched on. He was standing on top of a broken elevator, none of the cables were attached so no way of climbing out. The only thing Lance could think of was to head down the hallway right in front of him with a big 10 over the doorway. "Computer, bring up any schematics you have floor 10." He made a quick check of his weapons, his Desert Eagle and sword were all he had. A small map came up on his hud, not much to go off of, but it was all he had. Aiming his gun in front of him he started down the dark hallway.

[Morty]

Kiruza woke on the floor of the ship, alone and in the dark. The last half hour hand been a blur of activity she'd scarce been able to keep up with, so she had simply trusted in the competency of her comrades and followed their movements blindly.
She thrashed, righting herself and clearing away the debris that had accumulated around her still form. The floor beneath her was slick with fluid. Tentatively, she cast a glance towards the floor and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness--the only light coming from the dim glow of the emergency signs. She was relieved to find that the suspect fluid was only the water from her oxygen filter. Her chest plate had taken quite a beating; its mangled husk was rapidly draining of the little water that remained, coating the floor of the hallway with a thin, slippery film. Whether the damage was from the warp or from the series of events leading up to it she did not know. "Is--everyone--allright?" she asked through the comm, her synthetic voice coming out as a warped and syncopated drawl due to the damage her device had taken. Minus her current breathing dilemma she could not detect any injuries on her person, discounting a bit of bruising to the thoracic pump. That, and she couldn't remember where she had been going before the crash. She was not too concerned about that; the signs above the doors would give her a rough idea of where she was. She was more concerned about the others: they could very well have suffered serious injuries and be in dire need of medical attention. Silently she prayed for someone to respond to her message soon. The ship's whitewashed passages no longer seemed so very welcoming in this dripping, echoing dark.

[Nohiki]

"I could use a medic... I mean mechanic..." Ariaka whined, pulling herself up on the chair. "We're mostly here... Life support... Engines... God - There are red lights on almost all shield emitters. Fortunately i didn't broke the ship's back, we'll jump again... Oooooooh no..." Ariaka finished, finding no words to describe the apocalypse.

[Midnightmoon]

"Hingo, every time they use this thing they just mess it up some more." Lee growled to the data pad after falling out of supply closet with a crash. He had been fixing the access panel across the hall when things started to shudder and he dived into the closest room. When he entered he had everything pretty much working. Now the panels he banged back into place had popped out again, his tools were scattered and the lights were out which meant that power was probably out of the question. Lee slipped his goggles up to his forehead. "Gah." He glared at the disaster, ears back in distaste. Then he heard some crashing and they flicked forward in awareness. "identify." "ERROR, CONNECT TO SHIP NETWORK." "Nevermind." Lee whispered nervously. Lifting his arm with his laser cutter he advanced down the hall.

[Kauria]

Rucha fell from where she had fastened her feet to the ceiling, crashing into one of the chairs above—no, it was below now—her. "Whoa, no jumping again yet," she said, pushing herself up with the help of the seat. Her arms were shaking. "We don't know where everyone is yet, or where the ship itself decided to go. I mean, unless you know." Opting to sit rather than attempt to stand, she turned around and slumped into the chair.
Ariaka's earlier words finally started to register, and an unfortunate thought struck Rucha. "Wait, what's the last thing you remember happening?" she asked nervously.

[Nohiki]

"There was this big crash in the hangar, Tal'Set walking around, I used emergency armor release, then.... Dark. What did I do?" She said, looking at the expression in Rucha's face, "WHAT did I DO? I did not jump the ship, please tell me we are not the tiniest needle in the biggest d**n haystack possible!" she said, her sky blue eyes widening like never before.

[Kauria]

"Oookay." Rucha exhaled slowly. "Short version? We were followed, you pulled an emergency jump. There was a power surge, and here we are." She flexed her fingers on one hand, then the other, deciding she'd recovered from the sudden return of the gravity.
" . . . Yeahhh, I'd kinda hoped you knew what you were doing." She looked up at Ariaka and braced herself.

[Zetherus]

A flickering light of Keil's power armor could be seen down the pitch black hall of an unknown corridor he was exploring earlier. The commando woke to his V.I blaring in his ear as he sat against the wall, "WARNING, WARNING, WARNING, E.M.P detected. Rebooting armor defense systems in three, two, one." The ancient armor hummed until all the lights on the chest plate came on to illuminate the dark hallway. "What of the dark inferno was that?!" He growled as he stood and lifted his gaze down the hallway seeing an odd symbol painted in the center on a very large rusty door. Keilumtol tried to get hold with Ariaka but his comm wasn't working either so he looked behind him from where he came from and noticed the doors were sealed shut from a possible natural danger lingering behind it. Seeing that he couldn't go that direction, he turned back to the door at the far end of the hall and started walking to it.
(Imagine this same hall just the lights are off and a huge red "X" with odd warning symbols surrounding the mark on a large vault like door at the end of the hall.) themeparkreview.com/forum/files/24__800x600_.jpg

Meanwhile: Tal'set was asleep on top of one of the tall wall console to the far right of Ariaka's chair and out of sight. You would have to look up to see him!

[Nohiki]

Even as Rucha spoke, Ariaka slowly limped to the glass wall in the front of the bridge. Her words felt like hammer on her back. She gazed upon the stars, making a sound between sobbing, painful moaning and terrified gasps, completely ignoring her companions. Rucha's last sentence didn't help at all. She just stood there, completely lost, not knowing what to do. Then she let out a bone chilling sound, something between a disc grinder and scream. She bent forwards, banging her head on the glass, shuddering, her hands desperately grasping the guard rail.

[Midnightmoon]

Lee lopped forward slowly. Down a few halls he came across the remains of what was the elevator he had used to get down here. Amoung the rubble he distinguished a large indent. "Heellooooo..." He whispered loudly looking around nervously. In the quiet his half-hearted call was eary. He heard a skittering behind him. He jumped around to face the way he came and heard more skittering. He aimed his cutter into the dark as he flicked his thermal eyelids into place. There was certainly something there... Something small with a lot of legs shot out of the wall. Lee freaked and did something with his hand and the cutter shot at the assaulting creature before Lee fell into the indent. When he scrambled to his feet again the thing was standing at full height on it's stilts of legs, twirling and squeaking in agitation.

[Morty]

((Did Lee just find Gepka? XD))

Kiruza felt her way along the dark corridor, water trickling from her ruined chest plate. One hand against the wall, the another clutching her chest, she periodically glanced over her shoulder, hoping to see a sign of the others. Behind her stretched a trail of moisture, glistening in the light of the red emergency signs. From what she gathered from the conversation between Rucha and Ariaka-- who seemed to be in the same room together, and mercifully had access to communication-- their situation was grim. "Lost? WeE can't be lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-lost." Kiruza exclaimed, her damaged translator stumbling over the sentence like a broken record. Her normally pink eyes were ashen as she listened with growing horror to the faint sobs echoing over the transmission, growing in pitch before tearing into a shrill, mechanical scream. "A-A-Ariaka? W-W-What's hAAAAppening? How badly are you-you-you daAmA--" her words came out harsh and distorted, flickering like the last light of a distant supernova before it finally fades from the sky. And like that, the signal went out.
Kiruza didn't know whether the other two accounted-for crewmates could hear her, but she received no more correspondence from their end of the line. Nothing but the soft whisper of static met her ears as she remained, petrified, in the silent hallway. While the Shis may not share the human's sense of camaraderie, they are pod creatures, and aquatic. Long distances may separate two members of a pod, but they will still be able to hear each other's voices across the dark reaches of the ocean: the acoustic properties of water dictate it. To be so utterly cut off from contact was unnatural, and frightening. The Shis sank to the floor, her arms folded over her chest in order to retain what little was left of her breathing water, and attempted to plot her next course of action.

((On cue: everyone go to pieces. XD))

[Nohiki]

It took good two minutes for Ariaka to come out of the shock. "Ok, ok, think..." she said for herdelf. The twin fans on her back started to spin rapidly as they were trying to cool down the machinery inside the android, who was mercilessly abusing it. "We can't find out where we are, not even from the star positions, because we do not have any points of reference. Yes, find some. The ship has to be able to do that. It'll take forever though." she muttered, slowly raising her voice to normal volume. "We need to find the others. They might be hurt worse than I am. Since i don't know what other damage the ship took, let's assume the gravity and life support might not be working. We need to get to the armory. I need new armor to substitute for the fried leg and you're gonna need it's life support." She said to Rucha, tightening her grasp on the guard rail and closing her eyes. With a roar and the fans almost exploding by centrifugal forces, she torn a meter and a half out of it, supporting herself with it and starting to limp into the corridors, her cane making a loud clicking and screeching on the metal floor.

[Zetherus]

Tal'set woke from the sudden K.O and stared down at Ariaka limping off and Rucha standing there working on the terminals. "What the hell was that, are you guys alright?" He called out to the two before the android had vanished. The sniper pushed himself off the tall terminal and landed on the ground checking if his body was still intact. "Everything seems to be in order here sort of! What about the others and the rest of the ship?" He asked while checking his healed arm and noticed that he could move it almost freely. The Anero'nolmi shrugged then placed his cylindered gauntlet back on his left arm and activated his armor. He noticed his re-breather came back online and his motion detecter lit up on his neural visor. "Awe much better, now I can go back to E.V.A objectives!" He thought out loud.

[Nohiki]

Ariaka managed to get to the armory. She skipped the android section - Her usual armor would draw too much power replacing her leg. She went to the marine section instead. She browsed through the regals and finally found what she was looking for. Well, not exactly. "Apparently women with underdeveloped chests weren't hired." she said with disgust and thrown the female armor away, taking the smallest male size instead. It was obsidian black suit that perfectly adhered to it's wearer, yet had built in motion supports she needed. To boot, the armor had a backpack generator that would be capable of sustaining her for far longer. the only cons were decreased strength, no built in weapons and tools and she used her old helmet that she was used to.

She did a few exercises to test her motion capabilities and fired up the suit's communication, giving them full power of the generator. "Kiruza? Anybody? Make some noises or something so we can find each other. If you're hurt, try to do something that would alert the ships sensors, like turn off and on the hallway's life support. don't move, we'll find you." she said and started burrowing through a pile of tools she might need.

After not getting any response, she brought up the ship map, realizing the crew should be somewhere between bridge, quarters and a hangar, she restricted her search into few corridors. The sensors were giving out too much damage readings, so those wouldn't help her. There seemed to be a pattern in the communication malfunction though, enveloping the front of the ship and ending halfway through in a spherical fashion. She quickly checked external feeds if any of the stealth planes grappled on the hull, but they came in negative, and even the shape of the interference pointed towards something within the ship. She turned towards the exit, deciding to investigate, when, for just a split second, a picture of her zombiefied shis companion flashed in front of her eyes. She shook her head and continued.