Chapter 5: Lost and stranded

[Midnightmoon]

"A far as i can tell it's Lee." he responded to the spidery Gepka, still looking around nervously for the water. Then he plugged his ears as Arika screached again. Then before his ears could stop ringing she was starting a count down to jump. "Gaaah! We can't be leaping around like this!" Lee yelled angrily to the ship forgetting about his fear for a moment, then he growled to Gepka, "Nothing is stable. If Arika keeps jumping willy-nily then more bad stuff is just going to accumilated." Frustrated, Lee then shoved the goggles back into place over his eyes and headed down the hall. "Map." "RESYNCRONYZING. blip-" After a second Lee spoke again, "If we head this way, then a few halls down we'll reach a ladder that will take us to the main passage on level 5 which in turn will leed to the bridge. From there we can access a lot of status information. You two coming?"

[Nohiki]

All went quiet. They appeared to be alone, at least for the moment. finally, noone was trying to kill them. Maybe, just maybe, they should abandon their chase for... whatever the coordinates ultimately led to. Ariaka understood the need of her crew to find out who they are, but the more she remembered, the more she was sure she'll take all the blame. And the last things she'll alow would be her deactivation, or capture for study, and least of all, she knew that the only way they would ever make peace with their pursuers will be to give up the ship. Her ship. Her only home. She toyed with the thought of simply continuing in random direction. After all, it wasn't like any of the crew understood how the stardrive worked, or even operate it for the matter. It would be unfair to them, but she didn't see any other option.

She put these thoughts aside. For now, she will not deceive them, but if the next destination is going to be even worse than the last one, she will have to talk to them. For now though, she was too occupied with piloting the ship. They were in a solar system with several planets. None were exactly habitable, but few of them had what they needed. there was a gas giant from which they could replenish the lost fuel and there was a big rock, too hot and with toxic atmosphere, but one that should be accessible with environment suits and the sensors detected massive amount of clear metals on the surface, probably as a result of meteoric bombardment. If she got her hands on raw materials, they might be able to do a lot of repairs.

"Attention crew," she went on shipwide, "We are approaching a solar system with stuff we might need. I will be dispatching drones to refuel us, and there is a shot at repairing a lot of the damage we took if you're willing to stay here for, say, a week. I'll leave it up to you, but know that while we can still jump perfectly, our odds of surviving any more battles without repairs are less than low." she said, and gave them some time to process the information.

Meanwhile, she decided to open more of he folders. She opened the one with the same name as the ship and typed in the password she saw in her memory. It worked. She gained access to everything there was to know about the ship. And the more she saw, the more she started to fear the wreck she was calling home a minute ago. The whole ship was a genocide machine, built with only one purpose: to rid the universe of anything that was sentient and not human.

[Morty]

((Will that ship-wide broadcast reach places in Gepka's range? ))

Gepka faced the marine, chirped, then scuttled after Lee. He had no intentions of staying in the abandoned sections of the ship for any longer, and he had a feeling the marine wasn't going to be his best friend. He caught up with the Lalungil, emitting tiny, high-pitched squeaks every once in a while to check his surroundings. As long as he followed the dot of warmth that represented his alien companion, he would be fine, but he thought it was wise to familiarize himself with the ship's layout, in case he ever needed to find the medical ward again. He wondered where everyone was. Shouldn't a ship this size have hundreds, if not thousands, of crew? Instead, the rooms they passed were all cold and lifeless. He hoped everything would be explained when they reached the bridge. He was feeling rather dizzy and disoriented, not to mention stiff. How long had he been in that pod for?


"I am." Kiruza replied, regarding the giant Anero'nolmi cautiously. He seemed veritably unhinged. Kiruza was sorry that she hadn't been able to locate a treatment for the hallucinations. Whatever it was, they'd been unequipped for dealing with it, and that was a worrying thought. Suddenly, a jolt passed through the floor of the ship, startling Kiruza and causing the Ikikoyan to convulse violently. Keilumtol was thrown flat on his back from the shock. "Good question." said Kiruza at the warrior's exclamation, checking to see that everyone was still all right. "Oh, no, what aaa mess-s-s.." she fretted, extricating the IV needle from Setiri's charred flesh while the poor ant girl whimpered. "It muuust have gone u-u-u-p through the I-I-IV stand's metal bAAse and down the wire.. There-there-there, it's not sooo ba-ad." With one hand the Shis daubed at the Ikikoyan's injured torso, with another she shuffled through the drawers to find a burn cream. Another hand wound the gauze around the wound after applying the ointment, and the last hand worked on refurbishing the needle. While she worked the telephone cut in, and Kiruza had to free a hand in order to pick it up. At the other end of the line she heard Ariaka confirm that they had just performed a successful jump. She was greatly relieved to hear that they might be staying in one place for a while; it would be a welcome change to all the fast-paced emergencies they seemed to be constantly running into. She fixed the new IV needle in the Iki-kithwari's remaining armpit and said her piece. "III think it would be ni-i-i-ce to stay in one-one-one place for a while. Our poor ship has-has-has sustaaiiined no end of dAAmage, not to me-e-ention, our poor creeeew." she added, gazing upon the two aliens ruefully. "Sp-ea-ea-eaking of whiich, Keilumtooool has loca-ca-cated another creew member. She-she-she suffered soome damage typicaal of unattended cryo-o-ogenic awAAkening. I belIIIeve there may-may be ooother unknow-know-known crew members wanderrrring the ship AAAt the mo-oment, if this iiis so. I have refraiiined from interro-ro-rogating the new creew member, but I shall do sooo at yourr discre-cre-cretion, Captai--- Ariaka."
Setiri folded her hands in her lap as she sat on the edge of a sleep pod. The word "interrogation" struck her as rather ominous, and she wondered what exactly the strange aliens had in store for her. At least they'd called her a crew member and not something obvious like "test subject" or "prisoner". That was a relief.

[Midnightmoon]

After a while of "silence", interupted only by squeeks of Gepka and creaks of the ship, Lee cleared his throat and said, "Ya, so... where did you wake up? Everyone else was found mostly in or around the medical bay by the front of the ship."

[Nohiki]

"We're still 12+ hours from the first stop. There is a game room somewhere on this hulk. Might as well do something just for fun once in a while, or we'll go crazy. We'll have enough time to be useful once we het there. I'll send a map once i find it in case anyone's interested.." Ariaka announced and disengaged from the ship. The warnings popped back on the console as the stardrive was off line without her. After the recent revelations, she's gonna need some time before unlocking any further folders in the database. Why did she feel that the further she went, the worse it got, and her name was last on that list? Perhaps she better leave it an unknown. She shrugged it off and headed out, recalling the specs of the ship. At least one good thing came out of this, she now knew about most of the things on the ship. Too bad 90% of them were probably out of order. Before going there though, she made a detour to the cryo lab. She walked in, looking on each of the person for a while. She saw the newcomer, but that left her calm. What annoyed her was the Shis' broken translator. Out of everyone, This crew member was probably in the most hostile environment to their race. She looked on Kiruza, than on the pods, back, on the pods again and she walked over, pulling a whole new translation machine out of the pod's storage, holding it in front of the Shis. "People usually keep spares." she smiled and left the lab.

That felt good. Perhaps she could repeat something like that. She remembered one other detail from the crew files, and immediately knew what to do, though it was a slight hazard, considering how that place affected her. She went towards the hangar, and entered the exploded lab. Nobody bothered to remove the nigh-incinerated body. They had other more important stuff to do. she went to the corpse and torn the pocket on what was left of the lab coat open. A small item fell out, just like she remembered it would. She took it and brushed the soot off of it. She was holding glasses. Looking through them to determine if they were what she needed, she called 'close enough' and went for the bridge. She approached Rucha from behind, and gently set the glasses on her face. "Better?" she asked.

[Morty]

Gepka considered the question. "Well, to be honest, I hardly remember what happened when I woke up! Everything is sort of fuzzy. I remember being wet, and having a cramp in my legs, and someone was poking me with a stick. She looked a little like you, actually! Two legs and all that. Anyways when I got my bearings she had run off, so I wandered around the ship for a while feeling very strange, and then I tried to say hello to you!" Gepka related in a small, excited voice, bobbing occasionally.

[Midnightmoon]

Lee paused at that. "Something like me? Do you mean another of my kind or just something with a humanoid shape?" he'd only taken onestep when he stopped again and half turned to give Gepka a quick, "And she poked you with a stick?" Shaking his head he continued on again, reaching the ladder. "Anyway," Lee stared up the metal rungs with resignation, "here's the rundown: we have an assortment of crew of different races running around the ship right now, only a fraction of the total headcount of the ship. Everyone who woke up has amnesia and somethings messed with the archives that we can't get a lot of background on ourselves, the ship or about what has us out here, or at least from what I can access. So longer story short; we're messed, the ships messed..." he started up the ladder,"...and we don't know how to fix it all."

[Morty]

Gepka quickly processed the information and started answering the questions. "Well, she probably wasn't the same species as you, just the same general shape. I have have a little trouble telling you humanoid species apart, to tell you the truth! There are an awful lot of you." he said with some confusion. After Lee had climbed up Gepka sounded the ladder with his echolocation and made his own way up, folding his two middle pairs of legs behind his back and using only his front and back legs to climb, in imitation of Lee. "So the rest of the crew is missing? Maybe there are more of them in that room where I woke up in, there were a lot of pods like the one I came out of in there." he said as he crawled over the ladder, catching his breath. He switched to standing on his two middle legs while he let his front and back legs rest and looked around.

[Midnightmoon]

"Don't hold your breath. Of course, new people keap popping up every few hours,so you could be right." With a puff Lee crouched down after getting off the ladder, catchinghis breath after the long tedious climb. Lee was going to say most of the pods probably only held corpses, mentioning that something could have damaged them like his was, but stopped himself before he could get the words out. "...Come on, we're almost there." with one last peak at the data pad he straitened up and lopped down the hall.

[Kauria]

Rucha drew in a breath sharply, then touched the bottom of the glasses and laughed. "In this eye it is." She turned to face Ariaka, blinking once in an attempt to refocus her vision. "How did you know?"

[Nohiki]

"I'll make a flat glass for the other then." Ariaka replied, looking out the big window. "It was in your file all along. Also said your training, whenever that took place, was adjusted to the fault. This might even throw your aim off for what we know. Wanna go check if the virtual reality has a shooting range?" the android quickly designed the experiment to see how the glasses would work. She nodded towards he door and begun walking.

[Kauria]

"Wait, we have virtual reality?" Rucha trotted after Ariaka. "And I've been spending my spare time sleeping? Count me in for that!"

[Nohiki]

"Disclaimer: I have no idea if it works, but i'll do my best to make it so." Ariaka noted, turning the final corner and entering a door. It led to a large room, almost twice the size of the lounge in the crew quarters. Along the walls were VR pods. "Let's see what we got... aha!" She said victoriously while playing with some buttons, and one of the pods powered up and opened. "I don't assume you have any plugs on yourself you could use to interface directly with the computers, so inside yo go." She pointed. The pod was jet black, only a small and thin helmet-like device inside for the player. "Sim initialized, just push the green button inside once you're ready. I'll see you there." Ariaka said as she plugged a cable into the connector on her finger.

The scene shifted for her, and she now appeared to be in a forest. Briefly, this reminded her of home. Who are you kidding, you're home on a shipwreck. she thought, cut off by the system announcing another player joining in. th scene changed again, and regals with anything that can shoot appeared from out of nowhere. "choices, choices..."

[Kauria]

Rucha inspected the pod for all of fifteen seconds to be sure it wouldn't accidentally electrocute her, then climbed in and lifted the helmet to her head. With a whirring noise, it adjusted the necessary areas to fit comfortably with her crest, then positioned itself and clamped on a little more firmly.
Rucha pushed the green button. A tingle ran through her neck and fingertips as her senses were taken and replaced.
"Welcome, Player 2," the computer greeted her. "Identity: Rucha Coren."
Rucha's blood ran chill as she heard the voice from her nightmares speak her name. It was her own, yet so subtly different it was terrifying.
"Confirm?" the simulation prompted her.
Rucha closed her eyes, tried to shake off her shock at—nothing, really. "Identity confirmed," she replied after a hesitation. It almost felt like a lie to say so.
She opened her eyes.

A forest had appeared where once was an empty room, leafy trees towering overhead. As if in response to her entrance, though, the scene changed, and she found herself faced with a selection of firearms. Rucha took a pair of pistols that most reminded her of her own, grasping one worriedly in each hand, and glancing warily from side to side. She had no idea what sort of simulation this would be.

[Nohiki]

"Allright, let's start with something easy." Ariaka said, arming herself with the same plasma gun she used on the ship, a weird metal belt around her waist and a naginata with powered blade hung on her back. At a snap of her fingers, the scene changed again, this time into a firing range. "Let's get a refference shot, then we'll evaluate how you do seeing sharp. blurring your vision now." Ariaka said and modified the sim, causing Rucha to see like she does in real life. A still and a moving target appeared. "Five rounds into each, let's see what you can do." she subtly issued a challenge, moving to the other side of the simulated room to test her targeting systems. She hit the same place with the rifle four out of five times, with the other missing by an inch when the speed of wind changed. "Bullets would not get carried away by a breeze." she complained.