Chapter 6: No return

[Zetherus]

I felt estranged when Rucha got up rambling quickly about something in the shuttle and ran to the craft waving at me. With a shrug, I stood outside looking down at the moss on the rocks with a surprised look about the mysterious growth. The crackling of my knees as I kneed down on the ground while pulling out my knife. I froze before hovering the blade above the growth noticing the blood stained to the blade, "Knox!?" I said as a flash back of me fighting the huge Anero'nolmi and getting seriously injured afterwords on the Croatoan awoke me from the thought. "I wonder if he's still alive?" I asked the peerless blue skies before looking down at the moss and cutting a square inch from under the rock where I'm sure the Ceretai wouldn't look, "and if he is, me and that ancient freak has unfinished business to attend to!" I felt uneasy about being abandoned on some unknown world like this but how would I fix that? My star map has been unresponsive since I met the Croa crew. I guess this is how my people felt after leaving Zenith and building a new world to live on, to start a new hope. "Except, it's just me!" I blurted selfishly not including the other races in my vicinity even though I really didn't mean it. I need these guys just like any other comrade in a opposing and serious situation like this. I turned to the shuttle and made my way to the door unaware of what plans the A.I had in store for my position on this lonesome quiet rock.

[Nohiki]

From out of nowhere, I herd Tal's voice in my head. I quickly figured out some part of the new me had a wireless transmitter and i've picked up what he said through his comms. I decided not to answer just yet. And because i'm in the process of testing my new senses... "How... how long have you two been in these particular clothes?" I said, picking up something unpleasant through my nose. "Good thing I thought to make these for everybody." I said and pointed to a smaller version of the nano tank. Inside were four Navy-gold colored jumpsuits.

Allright, baby steps. I put one of my legs forward cautiously, slowly shifting weight to it. I felt the need to put my arms up like if I were walking a rope. Two... Threefour. I grabbed the edge of the table the unit stood on. "That wasn't so bad." I said and thrown the suits to Lee and Rucha. I recalled the deck schematic I pulled from the ship. "Showers, second door on left and right respectively. Sorry, no water, just sonics." I said, traversing the ship in my head while I pulled the suit on. I couldn't help it and had mine made with captain stars on the shoulders. I tightened the suit's belt around my waist and continued: "Also, due to limited space, some we're gonna have to share rooms unless you're OK with sleeping in labs. This bucket only has two bunk rooms for 8 people each. 8 crammed people, so I figure it'd be OK for two and two... Or... How many of us are here." I said, the last words vanishing into silence. I wanted to close my eyes, but to my dismay I found out I had no eye lids. Instead I gazed on the ground,

It was pretty reasonable to think that there was no one else. The ship wasn't that big. If they weren't dead, then they have stayed in Milky way. I quietly sobbed as I browsed through the faces. I missed Kiruza the most, the Shis was not only valuabe, but also the first and maybe the only one who acknowledged me as a person and not a thing. Then there was the ant like girl, who I didn't even get to know. The cyborg marine. And the ancient warrior. My last order... Did I sent him to his death? Are they ALL dead because of me? I was supposed to protect the shop. That was my purpose. And I failed. I let the revelations about our origins shock me into inaction. I noticed my eyes flickering and hands trembling, but that was it. damn it! This shell wasn't built to even grief properly.

I looked up and wiped a nonexistent tear off my cheek. Never again. I won't let that happen again. I took a deep breath which I could for some reason. "We have to think about what next. I think it's reasonable to say we can't stay here. These things can 'build' all the food you'd need but the weather on this rock is bound to be unpredictable, and very, very rainy." I said, referring to the fact that the planet was very hot and mostly ocean. "Tell Tal and gather your thoughts, I need a few minutes few myself, too."

[Midnightmoon]

I caught the suit designed for me and gave it a sour look. It was too bright and noticable, made to make sure the wearer was able to be seen. But what else was there untill he could gather up the courage to explore the packs some more. On the plus side at least getting clean didn't require water. "It's probably for the best anyway." I thought out loud. "Practically the water could be more useful for consumption. I meet you back outside afterwards, Rucha? We can check out your finds and figure out what else there is about this planet." Throwing the suit over my shoulder like a towel it headed for the restroom on the left side. On the way i activated the data pad and hooked up the wireless to the comms. "Hey, Tal'set? We'll be back out in a few minutes, we just have to do something quickly. By the way, Arika says we probably can't stay too long because of possible weather conditions, sooo, keep a lookout, i guess."

[Kauria]

"Hookay." I held up the suit in front of me and at once decided that gold wasn't my color and that I didn't actually give a crap about that fact.
Cleaning up seemed like a better idea, anyway. Ariaka had a point.
Even though I hadn't been wearing these clothes for too long, they'd weathered through three crises in a row and now stank of cleaning chemicals, food grease, smoke, and fear. I draped the uniform across my shoulder and started to peel off my jacket. "You'd better not throw this out or incinerate it or jettison it or anything else, all right?" I called, mostly to Ariaka. I messily folded it and set it on the floor before stepping into the showers to finish undressing.

Five minutes later, I came out again, wearing the new uniform and feeling lighter and cleaner than I had in all the time I could remember. I caught a glimpse of my own reflection on the wall and paused to examine it, though I still didn't look myself in the eyes. The suit looked better than I'd expected and was seriously comfortable. I stretched my arms, testing the range of motion. Good.
I just had to gather up my stuff, and then I'd try to corner the rest of the survivors so we could talk straight without comms or having to relay messages through each other.

[Nohiki]

Few minutes. Nice one, dummy. Try few weeks. So far I have trouble walking straight, not to mention... everything else. I thought as others left. I wanted to prepare some options to present to the crew when we assemble, but I was unable to think straight. "What do we do, what do we do? Aaaah! Think!" I muttered to myself while trying to move around the lab to get confident on my feet. Ok. Start from simple. What's easiest. Stay here. Haha, no, no no no no no. I thought after few minutes of pacing.

Footsteps in the hall announced that time was up. Ok, don't panic. Search for other worlds, possibly life. Ok. Make friends. I put my hand on the open sensor and halted for a second. "And... If they aren't friendly?" I sighed and walked out, exiting through the air lock. And I just stood there, stunned by multiple data streams demanding attention. I shoved them all to the back of my mind, all except one: Weather sensors. I still couldn't figure out where on me the sensors are, but that was secondary. "Everyone here?" I called.

[Zetherus]

"I'm here and waiting for the next excit-assignment!" The stutter hinting my irritation in this matter. We just arrived and now we are already thinking about leaving! I thought making sure my gear was still intact to my belts and buckles, I walked up to Ariaka standing ten feet away and simply recalled from what I heard, "From what that engineer said sounds like we are leaving soon! Are we?" I wasn't sure about leaving already but if the android insisted then it shall be.

[Kauria]

"Here." I lifted two fingers in acknowledgement. "What's our course of action?

[Nohiki]

With a massive sigh, I sat down on the metal stairs leading from the ship. Time to tell the truth. "I... I don't know..." I said, pausing for a few seconds. "We are where no one has gone before. I don't really see many options." I continued, shaking my head. "We can't stay here, I am already picking up what appears to be a storm massive enough to fry the ship's shields and without them it'll break up fairly easily, so staying here is a no-go unless you just want it to end..." I said in a tone that made it clear that is not going to happen even if I had to restrain them. The thought of being once again the only one on a ghost ship made me shake. "As far as I can tell, there are three planets that appear habitable in range. If, and I gotta stress the if, we find anyone there, we have really only two options - either they can't help us get home, so we can stay with them if they are friendly enough, or we can ask for help getting back. Which... however, brings me to one thing: We'D be saying: 'We're inferior, and here is where we live'. Anyone else see the problem?" I summarized what I could think of. I could only hope for ruins of some civilization advanced enough to help us we could use, but that was wishful thinking.

[Midnightmoon]

"I vote stay away from people." I pipped in, arriving a bit later then the others because i had gotten caught up in updating the new datapad after getting clean. It was a mixed blessing to have the little device at my wrist again, for the the artificial company and the information it gave, or at least as much as it could for a machine with out of date info. Of course it had already started responding to my rhetorical mussings to myself, which was very unhelpful, and so once again it was muted. "I think we have more enemies then allies that we know of and until we have more data we should hold back. We don't want the same thing that happened on that planet where Tal'set got fixed up to happen on the next planet we come across." I leaned against the wall and tapped my goggles in thought. "But I guess we will have to leave. Staying would be the safest bet for avoiding people, but if our stuff gets as damaged as you say then we'd be struggling to keep everything in order and just tripping backwards instead of taking a few steps back."

[Nohiki]

"Oh, what happened here was adifferent matter. I'd get into it but believe me when I say it'S better not to bother ourselves with it." I sighed, thinking back to what I discovered and wishing I deleted that before I downloaded into this form. "Anyway, we might not have a chance to decide. There are only three worlds in sensor range that support life, and if there is someone there with at least primitive spaceflight, they'll know about us. Good thing is that in this galaxy, we have a fresh start, so noone is going to hate us by default." I shrugged.

[Midnightmoon]

"Then i guess we go. Less chance of dying if what you say turns out correct." I finally conceded, getting up from the wall and started making a plan. Pressing some buttons on my data pad i started by trying to find the best place to employ myself. "I guess I'll see what i can do about door mechnics and sheilding. Even if there isn't anything wrong with them I might be able to patch them into something stronger, just in case we can't lift off in time or for other reasons." I felt a bit better now that I had something to concentrait on other then my own black out and these other fealings I found myself listening to. I looked up from the pads screen, "Anything else you think we should look at?"

[Nohiki]

I nodded and got up. "This thing, unlike Croatoan, smells new. It would be great if you can figure out some boost to the shields, but there's no need to bother with mechanical stuff like doors, they all seem to work well. I had access to the diagnostic routines, everything appears to work like clockwork." I reported. "What we could really use is more power. It would increase shield power, get us faster, both sup- and faster than light. Engineering room is here." I said and simply transmitted the map to Lee's datapad with sheer thought. This new shell was amazing.

OOC: New chapter? My ideas: Exploring abandoned space station or tron style virtual world

[Zetherus]

I smiled at the conversation upholding in front of me and agreed with everyone else about the next subject, "Alright fine, lets go pillage ships and explore worlds," I shrugged then turned to the direction my war jet is landed, "I'll see you all on the horizon." With that, I knew for nothing else to bring up into thought. I started my way back, hinging my mask to the re-breather connected to my hood, and found a reason to look at the scenery before I take off into the dull lonely stars that has always followed my travels.

[Nohiki]

"Hold on." I halted Tal'Set, "I want all of you on the ship. While I can still do pretty much everything, just in case we get into a jam, it would aid us greatly if someone else could pilot and you are the most trained to do that." I said, "Let me have a look at your plane, maybe I can figure out a way to drive it remotely. That way you'll also be safe on the ship just in case the jet gets shot down." I defended my case.

[Midnightmoon]

"I'll see what i can do then." I said with a wave, leaving Arika and the others to their own planning and tasks. It didn't take long for me to wander into the engine room. Unslinging the bag i crossed my arm in front of my body and tapped my goggles with my free hand in thought. "Now, how should i go about this...