The Universe

Daeryk furrowed his brow sternly, trying to figure out why nobody laughed at his joke. He knew it was funny, well thought it was at the least, and merely wanted to lighten the mood of the situation a little bit. He followed quietly along while trying to think of something to say to make up for the joke he had said earlier, and listened while the captain talked to the medical officer, Alethea, that was her name, Daeryk remember with a slight smile on the side of his mouth. He kept dazing in and out of reality until he saw Theo stop momentarily to shine his light on teddy bear hovering in the zero-g.

Daeryk leaped forward hesitantly to get a better look at the item floating in front of them. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the sight of the strange coloration of the bottom-half, hoping that it was not what he thought it might be. He grabbed the doll by the ear, picking it up slightly and turning it around so he could get a better look when he noticed what had been white patches on the bottoms of its feet, and were now a faded pink color.

“Holy shit…. Captain this ain’t good. Hey Alethea I think you should take a look at this here, and I think this is more your field of expertise.”

He brought the bear down next to his body, and with a flick of his wrist he tossed it towards the other two crew members. He looked at his glove and started to wipe it off on his pants, not thinking how little the gesture actually did.

“So Theo….What’s the game plan now? Do we head back to the ship or find the security team?”

Alethea listened to the Captain as he spoke. If they hadn't found anyone on the bridge and she hadn't found anyone in the medical bay, then the ship had to be abandoned. The Captain suddenly stopped, shining his light ahead. The dim stream of light penetrated the eerie darkness, which revealed a floating teddy bear. Alethea let out a small gasp - children had been aboard? Daeryk pulled it forward and then tossed it to Alethea. Inspecting it closely, the doctor couldn't make out what the liquid substance was. "I'm not quite sure what this is." She said, slowly turning the bear around. Opening her medical kit, she pulled out a specially made bag, placing the bear inside. "I'd like to analyze it further, it might shed some light on what happened to the crew. And, for all I know, it could be dangerous, so if we come across any more, I suggest not coming into contact with it."

"Pricilla, Pricilla, where are you at?" Brooke murmured, through the glass of the almost non-existent 'star deck' of the Dancer. Her particular star, one which had caught her attention as a child and from then on played a cheeky - and sometimes frustrating - game of hide and seek with her ever since, had caught her eye briefly as she passed one of the many windows scattered across the hull and now she was persistenty searching for the beauty instead of finishing a half-weekly research report.

Tapping her fingers on the floor in an absent rhythm, Brooke rolled onto her stomach and snaked to the far side of the room for a different angle of searching, not caring for any wrinkles that were forming on her work clothes. After all, they were only work clothes. As her eyes continued to rove the ocean of space, a soft chiming of a long-fortgotten-by-most hymm began fleeing her lips. So rapt in her mind and space was she, that the she almost failed to hear the insistent beeping on her waist.

Slightly ruffled, Brooke pushed herself up to sit on the back of her legs, reaching to the pager on her high-waist. It was flashing the word 'deck' repeatedly, and with a sigh she cast a forlorn look towards the high heavens of space and left the 'star deck', heading for the nearest elevator.

Entering the already crowded room, Brooke's quirky smile lit up her face, briefly scattering any longing thoughts of Pricilla from her mind. Studying the crowd, she began to finger her digi-pad with one hand, and pull down the bottom of her soft brown shirt over black office pants. It seemed, as she scanned the silence, she had arrived not a minute too soon to be privy to the orders given by Captain Harwood. The fact that the only reason she was there was because when she had formatted her pager to fit to the ship, she hadn't limited it to the things that actually concerned her, instead leaving the programming to alert her when any call to five or more persons were made, didn't bother her. Brooke simply told herself that if there were any survivors, she would probably know where they were from, or what courses of communication to take with them - and, she was a perfectly capable almost physchiatrist, and any survivors on the ship wreck would most likely require her services as the meds assisted them.

So, as the collection of crew began leaking back through the double doors, Brooke joined them, moving towards her quarters. She would have to collect a different digi pad and an AT - one of the more ingenious devices invented for traveling, as it translated a magnitude of languages with the speakers voice rather than a robotic one.


Having collected the required items, Brooke headed towards Airlock B-17, intending on suiting up and meeting up with either the captain or medical team who were most likely already on the ship wreck. Reaching the Airlock, Brooke made a beeline to the suits, her eye on one of the medium sized. The deck was mostly empty, the mating tube extended, and Brooke grabbed the silvery item and helmet and headed towards the small bench on the far wall, not far from the bulkhead where Brooke spied an interestlingly garbed passenger she vaguely remembered seeing upon boarding the Dancer for departure.

Dropping onto the bench, Brooke began to slip into the suit, eyeing the guarded entry to the mating tube. Her intent staring must have caught the guards attention, because he beckoned a second over to take his place and made his way over to Brooke.

"I hope you don't expect to be boarding the derelict, ma'am."

Brooke, wearing the expression of someone insulted and miffed, stared at the guard a moment before replying indignately. "Of course I intend to board the ship. My qualifications will most likely be needed should there be any survivors, particularly if they're of a drastically culture. Not to mention the medical team will find me useful should there be any survivors, wounded or otherwise."

"And what might those qualifications be, ma'am?" The guard was aiming for a pleasant approach, but there was a steely undertone that suggested he'd already argued with someone about boarding, and he wasn't enjoying having his momentary superiority pushed at.

"Master in Inter-Galactic Communications and Affairs. And, I'm a phychiatrist." As if to emphasize this, Brooke made a flipping motion with official documentation and licencing digi-pad, causing a transparent screen with bold, eye-catching purple writing to pop up listing her credentials and more important licences. She held it open long enough to be read, than closed it and placed it by her side. To the dismay of her attempt to official her way onto the derelict, the guard didn't look impressed.

"The captain hasn't said anything about you joining any of the teams. I'm afraid -" this he said in a way that obviously indicated he wasn't really bothered in the slightest "-that I can't allow you to board until we have the all-clear that the ship is secure. You'll just have to wait like everyone else." The guard turned to return to his post, but added as an afterthought - loud enough for several to hear - "if anyone else has some sort of idea of getting onto the ship before the captain says so, you can return to your posts or quarters." With that, he turned smartly on his heel and resumed his place at the entry to the mating tube.

Brooke stared after the guard, mouth catching flies, for a long minute at the nerve of him refusing her entry onto the derelict before she'd even finished suiting up. However, having decided there were no flies to catch, she slumped back and closing her mouth, opening her note digi-pad and beginning to study the guard intently. She'd do what she did best while she waited - she would disect him.

“That sounds like a good idea doc” said Theo, as he moved forwards and peered into the room, those door the bear had been floating by. The beam from his helmet swept through a sloppy mess of abandoned clothing, a few other toys mixed in. Here and there, perfectly round globes of a grayish liquid floating among the human artifacts, so small and few in number, they could have escaped noticed. What had happened aboard this ship?

“We keep going” said the Captain, turning away from the room, “And keep looking for Sparky. Whatever is going on here, we’re not leaving anyone behind. We’ll look into testing the bear later. Lets go.”

Glancing back at his crew, Theo plunged deeper into the blackness of this section the crew quarters. He didn’t look to either side, perhaps to avoid finding something more sinister concerning the gray stuff. Maybe it was to avoid any distractions to the mission of finding Thaddeus. It could be because something just felt very very wrong in this part of the derelict.

They continued on their way, more cautious after having run into the strange liquid. What had happened to this ship, where had the crew gone? Pulling and pushing her way through the corridor, Alethea went through a checklist in her head, trying to match the substance with something she'd studied or encountered when she was the only doctor in her small settlement. Nothing proved to have the same visual properties, though.

Shrugging it off until later, Alethea addressed the Captain, "Where exactly is Thaddeus?"

"... somewhere above transport engineerin'." Thaddeus whispered into his comm, which recorded his every word to a small memory chip. "The scientific research model that this is most likely based on had a small space-goin' nodule that could go about independently. I 'member a few of the military research vessels had little boats they'd send into empty space and test weapons, and these little dudes could survive almost anything I-"

He took a deep breath and steadied himself. He was starting to hyper ventilate. The closed space of the duct he traveled through was wide, but there were many large wires of varying sizes. Though they were covered in a soft plastic like substance that could conduct very little energy, there was still a danger of getting caught in the wires as you crawled along. His heart rate started to drop steadily. Exhaling and inhaling loudly and slowly Thaddeus began to regain his concentration.

"Sorry about that, just needed a moment to catch my breath." The joke was in poor taste, but it helped. He started to carefully extract himself from the wires and tubes he had become entangled with as a result of his thrashing.

After a good five minutes Thaddeus was finally free of the circuitry and inched forward along the ducts. The walls always seemed to close in tightly, and Thaddeus was not a small man. He stopped again, closing his eyes.

"She walks in beauty, like the night. Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright..." The rhythmic thumping of high powered devices came to life somewhere below and ahead of him. The time passed slowly as the famous words of Lord Byron echoed in the small spaces of the duct. "... mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!"

Thaddeus sighed, laying still, "I think I'll erase that section of the recordin' when I get back to the ship."


With a thud and a grunt the sweat soaked engineer tumbled out of a grated duct low on one of the walls. "Damn it! Damn it, damn it!"

A few moments passed before Thaddeus lifted himself up using the wall. He rubbed his beard and the back of his neck as he looked around the room he was in. This was certainly not anywhere near where he thought he would be. He was in maintenance, he should have been in the engineering quarters. With a sigh he stepped forward and began to examine the consoles in the room. "Hmm... The controls are pretty simple. Too simple! There ain't no way any number of engineers could've manned this station."

He wrenched open one of the consoles and shined his multi-tool at the interior. Glancing at a few of the wires and their routes he pulled a couple loose. He pushed himself up and investigated the room thoroughly. "Speakers!"

Thaddeus started to dismantle a small comm station that was normally connected to the bridge, but was depowered. "Well, well, well... My ma didn't raise no fool after all."

Time seemed to be dragging along for Daeryk like video-logues of a tree-inhabiting creature called a sloth that was native to the original Earth. His mind kept straying off into strange corners, often recollecting non-sequitor pieces of information, like several Pre- Colonial wars fought in Earth’s early years, or ideas posed by philosophers he had studied for some time. Unfortunately he began mumbling to himself, and not realizing that his comm was on, began to ultimately speak aloud as he scoured the crew compartments, searching for signs of anything that had happened here.

“Of course if Whitefield was here he would say this was a result of the crew lacking in religious observance, but how would Nietzsche respond?”

This senseless prattling helped to ease a compounded anxiety, but was proving nearly ineffectual by the absolute lack of life in every living-quarter. Where did everything go, and what was that stuff floating around? A beam cast from the light of helmet-lamps swept over a hologram display device encased with the strange substance, and Daeryk floated towards it, cautiously extending a hand to clasp the object, opening its cartridge compartment, and amazingly found several salvageable chips inside.

Reaching up to flip the comm channel open, but freezing for a moment knowing that his soliloquy had been broadcast the whole time, and detailed the possibly valuable discovery to the Captain.

“Hey Theo I found a couple holographic data-chips in one of the cabins. The projector here is no good, but we might be able to get something out of them back on the ship.”

Making way out of the compartment Daeryk launched himself down the hallway towards Alethea and Theo, hoping that these chips might contain even a brief discourse of a crew-member’s shiplogue.