Ellis Allven's Story

Ellis was told that the trip to Rivina would take about 50 years. Multiply that by 365 to get 18,250 and then by 0.00027% to get about 5 days. That was how long it would feel like it's been before she reached her destination in suspended cryofreeze, if what her chip told her was true. She was still nervous, of coarse, of what may happen should something go wrong. The possibility of suffering from frostbite after awakening from cryosleep was to be noted as a risk, however the chance of trauma-induced heart attack from the temperature change and shock was much higher. She was told that everything would be fine if she stayed calm, and that's what Ellis knew best. But she couldn't shake the feeling that not everything would be all right. For instance, the ship's combustion engines may not be able to hold out for the entire journey, and then she'd be stuck frozen in a cryopod until either someone found her or until her mind finally gave out after tens of thousands of years of suspended activity. She was told that Rivina was a beautiful planet filled with wildlife and plenty of fresh vegetation for when they landed. Since the ship's food supply would only last two-thirds of the journey, the entire ship crew would have to cryofreeze itself over and over again to do yearly checks on the ship's systems as it piloted itself to the new world. The colonists, Ellis being among them, would be in cryofreeze the entire voyage. She was even told that if anything were to happen during the trip to the planet, either the crew would be up to fix it or the ship would even fix itself. It wasn't very top-of-the-line due to being constructed over a period of many decades, but it was made to last and was included with "Self Reconstructing Nanite Drones". If the hull were to take a hit from a passing asteroid, for example, the nanites would launch to quickly repair the damage.

Yet here Ellis was some hundreds of years later, sprawled on the ground and desperately breathing through what was left of her pure O2 tank, now knowing full well that everything she was told was a lie. The cryochamber was dark and barely lit by the flashing red emergency lights, or rather what was left of them, where each flash reflected hundreds of similar flashes off of the pieces of broken glass scattered throughout the room. Her vision was blurry and vastly disoriented, but she could just barely make out the smashed and missing cryopods around her. People long dead hung out of their cryopods or were laid back against the walls of the room in painfully awkward forms. Ellis, along with the rest of the room, were freezing at sub-zero temperatures due to all the cryopods being broken open while active. A cold mist leaked out of each pod, which mystified the ground around Ellis's hands and legs as she sat against her own pod. The fight to get out of her pod had left her exhausted. After the predicted 5 days had passed in her point of view, her building panic from realising something was wrong had released a sedative in the pod's system, causing her to fall into a sort of hibernation. When she finally woke up, she had begun suffocating from having used up all of the pod's stored oxygen. As a last resort, her chip forced her into activating her Acceleration program to break her way out of the pod. The struggle lasted all of 15 seconds, but felt like an hour of pain to her. She had fallen to the floor, and managed to grab her respirator out of her pod's storage unit before she actually did suffocate to death. The air in the room had chilled her lungs into a searing pain, and the stale air of her respirator was just as bad. But it had saved her life yet again, and for that she was thankful. Luckily, it didn't feel like she had broken anything while using the Accelerator program. After recovering for a few minutes, Ellis gathered her strength and pulled herself up using the side of her cryopod, which miraculously hadn't suffered the same fate as the pods around her. She strapped the plastic mouth covering of her respirator over her mouth and attached the tank of compressed oxygen to her side, easy to carry around due to only being the size of a half liter water bottle.

As she looked around for an exit, she saw the hull of the ship around her was in relatively good shape, although it wasn't as clean as it was when the ship embarked. Traces of rust and layers of dust could be seen here and there and down the hallway, marking just how much time had really passed. She felt her fears returning to her, but forced them back as she continued down the hall. Ellis was relieved to see a aqua blue covering stapled to the wall between two of the broken pods, signaling where the emergency air and water lines were. Ellis half walked and half stumbled to it, still dazed from being woken up from cryosleep and exhausted from her recent struggle, and ripped the panel off the wall. She reached her right hand to her left side, feeling the oxygen tank, and vented the stale air out of the tank. It released a hot fog from it, and after it finished depressurising she began to fill it back up with the ship's oxygen line. She heard the near silent scrubbing system in her tank turn on, signaling to her that what she was feeding into the tank wouldn't be very helpful to her for a good half hour. As she waited, Ellis tried focusing on her chip. The EVA-X prototype was her lifeline throughout all of this, and well as being the very thing that got her into this mess in the first place. It had been silent up until now, and should have at least given her a mental buzzing or something alarming her of what was going on. Her tank had filled, and she payed the EVA-X no more mind as she walked to the Grav Lift. It would lead through the 11 other cryo chambers before it arrived at a central "hub", where she would then decide where she should be headed to find out what had happened in her many years of sleep.

Ellis stopped in her tracks, still shivering, and looked back to her pod in self distaste. Looking around at the rotting bodies and shattered pods, she reminded herself of the current situation. What if the person who did this was still here? She had to be ready to defend herself. Shivering, she made her way back to her pod and fully opened the storage drawer which she had ripped her respirator from earlier, and looked inside. Her twin swords, the Hakurouken and the Roukanken, were still resting in the center without any sign of being tampered with. Both were 28 inch blades which she had used since she was in her early teens, and felt a familiar warmth as she took her prized weapons into her arms. Ellis strapped the blades to her back and at an angle so one hilt faced straight up from her left shoulder and the other faced diagonally to her left. It was unusual to put her blades this way for a duel wield, since it put her right blade over her left shoulder where it was hard to reach without being able to fully extend her arm, but this set-up hadn't failed her before. The only other thing she brought along was a small backpack concealing her 500 Terabyte laptop, which housed all the programs she had been working on, all the information she had stolen, as well as being able to provide a private network for her to set up a custom datascape should the need arise. Trying to avoid the more personal parts of her storage drawer, she picked out a purple tear-shaped gem that reflected blue and green aura-like lights from it, and slammed it shut. Pocketing the gem, she made her way back to the grav lift.

Ellis pressed the button to call the lift down and waited. While she waited, she slid out one of her swords from over her back with her right hand and tested her swing. The grip was jet black and nostalgic with an all too familiar touch, but her arms felt awkward and heavy as she swiped the blade in front of her. She decided that she must still be slow from being in cryosleep for so long, and slid the silver-blue blade back into it's black and silver casing. Glowing numbers at her side counted as she heard the lift approach. It hummed to a stop and the glass doors opened. Walking in, Ellis examined the room. It was a cylinder shaped room only as big as the service elevators at those old hotels you could find in Teresa's slum districts. Both the floor and the ceiling were identical, a silver floor with decorative indentations and the like. Around her were windows which could see into passing rooms within the Arlington as well as the empty space outside. The idea of putting windows here frightened her, but she was reassured before launch that the design of the ship prevented the windows from breaking due to the vacuum of space. She wasn't convinced. Pressing the button to head to the hub, she patiently waited to arrive at her destination.

As the slow ride up began, she looked through the window to see the glare of a nearby nebula. It was a beautiful plume of red, pink, and orange, and on one end it seemed to be reflecting a blue glow. She smiled at the flamboyant array of color and eased up against the opposite window. Space had always interested her, although it wasn't one of the things she primarily focused on most of the time. She sighed out loud to herself to make sure she was still actually alive. "What would it be like to live among the stars...?", she wondered out loud to herself. Usually, she would be busy hacking some sort of government organization or making some lucky guy win the lottery, then laughing at the animal-like woots and howls that they made, so she wouldn't have the time or the focus to freely think about things like this. It was then that she realised already how much she missed home.

The door opened, and Ellis exited the grav lift. She took notice of the lingering smell of nicotine in the air, one which she wasn't fairly fond of but one which she had lived with for a good portion of her life. Her father was a smoker, and would usually disregard the hospital warnings on the matter. Ellis despised him, for the man he was and for what he had done to her mother. Shrugging off the flashback, she moved on. A silent ding rang through the air as she exited the lift, signaling that someone, somewhere, had called on the grav lift. Her eyes widened a bit. Someone might have seen her, and it could have been the person who caused this all to happen. Looking around, she saw labelings showing where the mess hall, crew rooms, maintenance rooms, vegetation chambers, and other lifts were. Thinking on the more tactical side, she decided to go toward the vegetated area of the ship. It would be smarter to head to the main bridge of the ship with the main grav lift since it could be digitally locked, but locks were easily overridden these days. Who in the right mind would hide where the plants grew, and moreover, who would look there? She made her way down the corridor, passing the mess hall, and entered the room marked "VEGETATION". She then ran to the nearest closet and hid herself inside next to various farming tools and seeds. Surprisingly, it didn't smell like expired manure.

Honestly.......the milk wasn't half bad. In fact, it was pretty damn good. Who the hell would have ever guessed that freeze dried milk would actually taste good? It could have also been from the fact that he was starving. Either way, he was enjoying his beverage. The apples were a little......off, but food was food, and in the situation he was now, it was best not to be picky. He finished one bag of apples and moved onto the next. It was pretty handy how they filled all of these bags with freeze dried apple slices. He guessed these were mainly for children, but he they were probably all dead. He ashed his cigarette and popped another apple slice into his mouth.

Laidens ears perked up when he heard a soft ding. It was the ding of the grav lift. Somebody had come up. He immediately activated his advanced optic functions and looked through the walls of the ship. What he saw was a young girl. Late teens, well built, hair a mess, armed with two katanas and.......hair. Laiden felt his heart beat slowly starting to rise once again. Her hair was pink....along with her eyes. She seemed to have smelled something she didn't like, Laiden looked down at his cigarette and smiled a bit. This.....couldn't be. It couldn't be, even with all of this shit happening, it freaking couldn't be. He watched her walk right past the door, not even looking in, and walk straight into.......the vegetation room? Laiden then saw her get in what he thought was a cupboard of some sort. Why the hell did she do that? Was she hiding from something. She didn't look very panicked so he guessed nothing was chasing her. He looked to her again and gave her a quick scan. Her heart beat was a little irregular and her lungs looked to be struggling. Her outer temperature was pretty low, like his. She must have just gotten out of cryo sleep like him.He refused to check her name or chip type. This was one person he'd rather leave in anonymity.

Since she was hiding, he decided to leave her be and go back to his food. He had to be well fed to deal with whatever was going to happen next. Laiden then got a thought. Since their were obviously other survivors, what he would he tell them? If he told them his real name, thye could check the passenger log and realize he wasn't on it. Then they might assume that he was the one who caused this. He was not int he mood to be doing any of that. Who the hell was he impersonating a gain. He quickly searched his pockets and pulled an id out. Rufus Jones........, Laiden chuckled to himself a bit. He had tricked that poor sucker out of living on a new world where he could start fresh. Laiden suddenly stopped chuckling and looked around a bit. "Oh....yeah......right." He said to himself, realizing he had probably saved his life. HE was dead by now, generally people don't live longer than 500 years. He took another long drag on his cigarette. "Of all the forces in the Verse, why did karma have to be the one that was real?"

The now familiar ding of the grav lift sounded, this time followed by heavy footsteps. He activated his eye once again and saw a very heavily armored man. He could tell this guy was ESF. He was decked out and looking for a fight. He scanned and he showed signs of just waking up as well. So he didn't know what was going on either. It was a good thing he remembered his fake identity. He moved against the wall and looked like he was preparing to enter. Laiden looked away, focusing on his milk, but keeping his synthetic eye on him. It appeared his eye was closed, but he saw through his eye lid. The man then knocked on the door.

"This is ESF Enforcer Messer, anybody alive in there?"

Messer, huh? Laiden brought up his profile. Albrecht Messer.......ESF........German? Huh, weird. Laiden decided to keep him waiting a bit while he finisjed drinking his milk. He finished the packet with a refreshing sound. He put his feet back up and put out his cigarette. He kept Wrong on the table just in case. "Yeah, I'm alive. Why don't you come on in Officer. Got apples and milk with your name on it." He said calmly with no real emotion in his voice. He sort of just sounded bored. "Names Rufus Jones. Nice to meet you, Officer."

Ellis breathed slowly as she waited in the cabinet. The air was a bit murky in the confined space, and she felt her lungs burn a bit. She looked around the small room with what little light was filtering through the door. In the room, she saw various farming tools like rakes and hand shovels on one side, while bags of seeds and not-so-fresh produce lay on top of each other on the other side. In the back was a sort of work table. She walked to it and felt the metal surface, finding what felt like the heavy rod of a flashlight. She picked up the black cylinder and found the rubber button, and pressing it, flooded the room with a bright light. Getting a good look around, she couldn't find much else that could have been of use. Turning off and putting the flashing back where it was, she sighed and sat down on top of a bag of tomatoes, which had by now turned into a sort of organic dust. She choked on the smell as it exploded throughout the room and quickly grabbed for her respirator, and finding it clipped to her side, breathed from it. She relaxed, and rested her head on the metal wall with a near silent and dull thud.

Then there was another thud. And then another, and Ellis tensed up again. It sounded like someone was walking in the nearby hallway, perhaps on his or her way here. She shut her eyes, trying to vent the fear out, but then the sound stopped. Someone's voice echoed through the hallway, and Ellis was barely able to hear it. "This is ESF Enforcer Messer, anybody alive in there?" ESF? Ellis thought to herself for a few seconds. "What does that stand for...?", she wondered to herself. She remembered that it was some sort of security force that was sent to keep guard of the Arlington and act as a sort of government when the need would arise. Ellis's chip still didn't seem to want to cooperate with her at the moment, so she got up and silently exited the closet. She was right on assuming that the Officer's voice wasn't directed to her. As she exited, she heard another voice. "Yeah, I'm alive. Why don't you come on in Officer. Got apples and milk with your name on it.", just as audible as the ESF Officer's voice. However, this voice was more monotone and unfriendly. Hopefully, these two were just survivors of whatever had happened and not the people who caused what had happened. Now that she knew where the other two people were, though, she decided to make her way to the ship's Bridge. To Ellis, it seemed that the ESF Officer was looking to see where everyone else was and not to take over the ship. Hopefully, "Messer" wouldn't get the wrong idea if and when he found her on the Bridge.

Ellis took the more scenic route to the Bridge, which would be through the rest of the vegetation area of the ship. Once, this large open space was home to trees, plants, flowers and shrubs of all kinds. Looking up, you could see the false blue sky above and the solar lamp which was installed to substitute as the Sun. The room was popular amongst some passengers who wanted to get away from sleeping in a pod the whole trip, and was a sanctuary for those people. Now, however, all Ellis could see was a hellish sea of dirt where lumps of what used to be fruits lay, with tall and eerie trees standing tall below a flickering light above. It felt hot in the room, but it wasn't a surprise with the still active solar lamp above - even if it wasn't working as well as it used to. The wave of heat stopped Ellis's shivers and warmed her freezing bones, relieving her of any stress she still had buried away. She wished that she could lay down for awhile and just bathe in the warmth, but pushed onward through the room with another breath through her respirator. She wasn't here to get a tan.

She came out on the other side of the Vegetation room, into a mirror image of the rusty iron hallway she was in earlier. This was still the Hub, she was only on the opposite side. The ship was built in an odd fashion, not exactly in a symmetrical way like most ships should have been built in. On this side of the ship, instead of the mess hall, was an exercise room and a kind of sports arena leading to a Track and Field track which lead to other parts of the ship like the Hub did. In a way, it may have been easier to get to the Bridge going through this way. She wouldn't have to hack into the ship's system this way. "Not that I can at the moment...", she said to herself in a slightly agitated voice. Ellis wasn't comfortable with her chip working below normal standards. The only reason she could think of for why it wasn't working would be that it was still recovering from being frozen. She would be able to use it soon, just not until it "thawed". Shaking her head, she walked into the workout room. It was just as big as the cafeteria, and along the walls were various training materials cast along the floor. She also saw training weapons like wooden broadswords and dull plastic knives among the mess. Sifting through the room, she picked up one of the wooden staffs and rapidly spun it around in her hands before slamming one end onto the floor and creating a reassuring "thump" against the metal. Before swordsmanship, she had to learn to control the momentum of an object so she would be able to swing her swords easier. The staff was perfect practice, and she felt another wave of nostalgia. This time, however, she remembered the various training sessions she went through to get to where she was now. Holding the staff diagonally behind her, she made her way up a set of stairs to the Track Field.

The Track Field was designed as a tunnel ring which would go around the entire ship, connecting various rooms together by stairs and grav lifts as the Hub did. Walking on the orange lined track, she looked for the entrance to the Bridge. It was dark in the track, the flickering emergency lights dimly lighting an uncertain path for her. Ellis didn't exactly know where the Bridge was, only that if she kept walking, she would eventually run into it. After a 2 minute walk, she found a stairway leading up to a flickering sign reading "BRIDGE". She smiled to herself, thankful that she hadn't chosen to walk around the other way to find it, and ascended the metal staircase. There wasn't too much light here, and she could barely see the door handle as she grabbed it. It opened easily, to her surprise, and slowly pushed the door inward. She leaned the staff against the wall, and continued into the Bridge. "This is it...", she told herself.

The Bridge was supposedly designed out of an old movie called "Star Trek", which Ellis had watched herself over the datascape. Old human movies were interesting, and she had to admit that the old film was one of her favorites. As she entered, the room's lights all flashed on, lighting the white walls and turning on the various computer screens and consoles in the room. The change in lighting blinded Ellis, and she covered her eyes with her left arm for a few seconds to get used to the white room. She walked to one of the consoles and looked at the screen. It gave her a welcoming message and immediately asked her for a password. Groaning, she walked to what would be the "Captain's" chair and sat in it. Without her EVA-X chip, Ellis couldn't get the information she needed to find out where she was. She then looked to a screen over on the left side of the room and had an idea. "...I can, however, see what those two are doing...", Ellis said to herself. She descended from the center chair and sat at the security monitor, which displayed motion-sensitive cameras throughout the Arlington which had been more recently tripped. She saw the two people at the cafeteria, and began watching over them. As she watched, she flipped all the emergency unlock switches she saw, and many thuds and clicks could be heard throughout the ship as things began unlocking themselves. Anything and everything in the ship was now accessible, even the main grav lift leading to the Bridge.

The sudden sound of every door in the ship being unlocked caused Laiden much confusion. Sure, he was no expert on Space ships, but he was pretty certain that doors don't unlock themselves. Someone was in the bridge. It seemed the Esf Officer was rather jumpy, immediately showing his back top Laiden as he backed into the room, the sound obviously giving him reason for caution. Laiden eyed Wrong and was very tempted to pick it up and blow this upstanding Officer of the Law's brains out. He decided against it. With all that extra padding, it would have been more trouble than it was worth. Besides, this was a crisis situation, and in crisis situations, you were supposed to pull together or some shit like that. He would listen to what this guy had to say about the situation before he decided to do anything.......drastic.

Officer Messer then swung around and seemed to point his Luscious just a little to focused on him. His stance changed and he seemed to take more non-aggressive one. Well, at least he was trying. Though Laiden was easily able to detect that the good officer was very wary of him and seemed to be a little disgusted by him. His face was covered and he hadn't said anything yet, but Laiden could tell. People usually radiate that same feeling when ever their around him, he was used to it. That didn't mean it didn't piss him off though. The officer finally spoke.

"Look Mr. Jones, I don't know how you managed to get a hold of that cannon, and to be honest I really don't care right now. Arms infractions aren't even my department; and by the looks of things, nobody who would care is alive anymore. All I ask is that you don't point it at me, and I won't point mine at you, sound good?"

Laiden raised an eyebrow at him. Even if he did care, it wouldn't matter. Laiden would sooner blow Dudley Do-Right away before letting him even think of touching his guns. Laiden was about to respond, but it seemed the Ranger of the month had more to say.

"You're the first person I've seen alive on this floating graveyard Mr. Jones. I'm requesting that you divulge any and all information you have on our situation to me. Then we can figure out how our future acquaintanceship will develop."

Laiden sat up a bit and gave him a straight look. One that essentially said Are you serious. Laiden actually chuckled a bit after he was finished talking. HE reached into his jacket and pulled out another cigarette. He didn't watch how fast he did it, his gun was already on the table, it's not like he was going to pull out another when he had one right in front of him. He placed the smoke in his mouth and lit it. He then took a long toke on it, then released the smoke into the air. Laiden then slowly reached over to his gun and placed his index finger onto the handle. He then moved it slightly to the left, showing that the gun wasn't pointing at him anymore, even if it was facetious.

"Man, do they train all you peacekeepers to be so damn polite. I mean, for all you know, I set my pod to open early and then murdered all the crew and passengers I could find, only sparing a few so I could create my own Harem. And you walk up to me, back turned and "Request that I divulge any and all information on the the situation." I mean, how is anyone supposed to take you seriously?"

Laiden ended with a little chuckle to himself and took another drag on his cigarette. It was obvious he was just upsetting Messer with his words, though he was having fun messing with him. Though, he decided that he would cooperate......for now.

"But...if you must know. I shall....divulge, everything I know about the situation. First thing.....we are all going to die. Slowly and painfully. Whether from lack of food, water or oxygen and I'm not entirely sure. Second thing, the reason behind that. It has been 500 years since the launch date." He let the last thing sink in a bit for him. No doubt it would be a little shocking for him. Laiden just rolled with the bad times and accepted his inevitable lame death. This Officer of the Law obviously was nothing like him, so it would probably be more of a shocker to him. Laiden half expected shit like this to happen. Life had never pulled a punch with Laiden, and he couldn't give less of a shit.

"Last thing, though. You are not the first person I've seen alive. Their's a girl who..." Laiden traced his eye over to where the girl was hidden, but she was gone. He couldn't find her. He then heard an odd ding and the sound of something powering up. From the ding, he guessed it would be the main grav lift. Damn, she was clever......assuming it was her. "Who was, in the vegetation room. Now, if I'm not mistaken, is on the bridge, and I think she was the one who unlocked the doors and opened up the main grav lift. Though I can't know for certain." He took another drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke into the air.

Laiden then stood up and walked slowly around the table. He picked up his gun and re-holstered it. He then casually sauntered towards Messer. He got very close to him, then threw his arm around his shoulder and gave him a very alluring look. "The only way to know for sure is to check it out for ourselves. Though I have to admit, I'm a wittle afwaid. Do you think a big strong officer of the law like you could stick close and protect little old me?" Laiden said, voice dripping with raunchiness. He started work his finger down the front of Messer's armor seductively. "Whaddya say?"

Ellis watched as the ESF Officer slowly backed his way into the room and across her viewscreen, obviously startled by how she had unlocked all the doors and lifts in the ship. She put her right elbow against the metal table and leaned her head on her hand. "Oh... I think I may have scared him...", she said, then began laughing at her own joke a moment later. As much as she wanted to torment the Officer with more locking and unlocking of things, she needed to listen to see what they knew. Watching the screen, she waited for one of them to talk. The Officer had slowly backed his way into the room and shut the door behind him, then turned to face another man sitting at one of the tables. The Officer seemed to be aiming at the man, but from the angle Ellis was looking from, she couldn't easily tell. The man at the table didn't seem alarmed for having what looked like a Luscious pointed at him, since he had a gun of his own on the table and pointed at the Officer. The Officer spoke. The sound wasn't very high quality, probably from time corrosion.

"Look Mr. Jones, I don't know how you managed to get a hold of that cannon, and to be honest I really don't care right now. Arms infractions aren't even my department; and by the looks of things, nobody who would care is alive anymore. All I ask is that you don't point it at me, and I won't point mine at you, sound good?" The Officer paused. "You're the first person I've seen alive on this floating graveyard Mr. Jones. I'm requesting that you divulge any and all information you have on our situation to me. Then we can figure out how our future acquaintanceship will develop."

Ellis was able to make out the word "MESSER" on the shoulder of the Officer's uniform, and guessed that must've been his name. "...Well, no shit.", she told herself. She needed a wake up call badly, and she slapped her face with both hands in an attempt to do so. Her face blushed bright red, but she didn't feel any more awake than she already was. The man at the table, Jones, took out what appeared to be a cigarette and lit it. Her eyes widened a bit. She had smelled smoke while passing by the cafeteria. How could she have not noticed the man there? Had he seen her? Jones reached for his gun and tilted it so it wasn't facing Messer anymore, and spoke.

"Man, do they train all you peacekeepers to be so damn polite. I mean, for all you know, I set my pod to open early and then murdered all the crew and passengers I could find, only sparing a few so I could create my own Harem. And you walk up to me, back turned and "Request that I divulge any and all information on the the situation." I mean, how is anyone supposed to take you seriously?" Ellis couldn't help but smile at his words. Watching other people sure was entertaining. "But...if you must know. I shall....divulge, everything I know about the situation. First thing.....we are all going to die. Slowly and painfully. Whether from lack of food, water or oxygen and I'm not entirely sure. Second thing, the reason behind that. It has been 500 years since the launch date." Ellis sunk into her chair at the thought, letting the fact sink in. What a downer. Had her chip been working, she could've let his words wash over her as if it were nothing. However, it STILL didn't appear to be working, and she smacked her forehead in a mock attempt to get an old piece of machinery working. That's exactly what it was, anyway.

"Last thing, though. You are not the first person I've seen alive. There's a girl who..." Jones seemed to look around, and Ellis was caught at full attention as he spoke. "...Who was, in the vegetation room. Now, if I'm not mistaken, is on the bridge, and I think she was the one who unlocked the doors and opened up the main grav lift. Though I can't know for certain." Ellis stood up, looking down at the monitor. So she had been seen. "He probably has some sort of x-ray chip", Ellis noted to herself. Jones seemed to be paying closer attention to the situation, while Messer seemed to just want to find out where everyone was and take charge of the situation. Had Messer gone directly to where Ellis was now, he could've easily done both. Shaking her head, Ellis backed away from the monitor. "Well, looks like they're coming this way. Lets see what else I can get running before they get here..." She said to herself, and looked around the Bridge. She noticed the main frontal view screen had powered on, but was fuzzy and glitched. She walked to another monitor below the viewscreen and sat at it. This console served both as a navigational station and a manual defence turret control. The turrets mounted around the Arlington were all classified as SkyCap RP-40s, slow shooting heavy plasma turrets made mainly for destroying asteroids on trajectory toward space stations. All turrets should have been passcode locked, however two seemed to have been tampered with and was accessible from where Ellis was. She accessed the turret, and saw a blurred image. From what she could make out, the turret she was currently looking from was facing the turret on the opposite side of the ship, which had been shot at and destroyed. On the corner of the view screen, she could barely make out the damaged camera system for the main view screen of the bridge. "Now who would want to do that...?" She asked herself, and got up from the turret controls.

As Ellis was thinking of what to do next, she felt a burning sensation in her head, and her vision flashed and twisted. She fell against the wall, gripping her head tightly, and her vision stilled. This kind of thing hadn't happened since she had hacked her own chip on accident. In the center of her vision was a greeting and startup message, followed by the room being outlined in some sort of grid. The grid linings faded, and the sides of her vision she could see line upon line of code scroll by faster than she could read, but probably meant equal to gibberish anyway. Ellis's chip was beginning to start up. She sat in another chair, and looked at the locked screen. She focused on it, but nothing happened. Disappointed, she leaned back. She would still need to wait for the EVA-X to finish loading its user interface before she could start hacking again. Ellis laid her head back against the chair and closed her eyes, resting her weary head to help her chip start up faster.

Ellis felt like drifting away to sleep at that moment. All the tension she had built up in her head after all that has happened thus far seemed to suddenly disappear when she rested her head on the wall. The looked up at the white fluorescent lights covering the ceiling, and her focus drifted. The lighting system here was made to show what time it was on Teresa, according to the sun's position in comparison to the home planet she once lived on. "I wonder what's happening back home now...?", she idly thought to herself. Pushing her tired body off of the wall, she raised her arms into the air in a stretch, and heard a sort of cracking noise as she did so. "...Have I really been asleep that long?", she painfully thought. Naturally athletic, it wasn't often she'd be able to make cracking noises with her stretches. Even her knuckles refused to make a sound when she pushed her fingers into her palms like some of the people in her high school used to do. The idea that her body was getting lazy on her disgusted her, which woke her up some. Ellis decided to try interacting with the computers again, and sat in another chair.

As she sat down, two floating white screens appeared on the left and right of the screen she sat before. Both displayed a welcoming message, then split off into separate tasks. The screen on her left opened a menu, and began listing a series of logical things to do with the computer she was sitting in front of along with other trivial stats and facts about what was going on around her. The screen floating at her left, however, began streaming thousands of lines full of different codes and action sequences related to whatever Ellis did with the computer. She smiled, knowing that her Breaching system was now at it's fullest working proficiency. It got to work almost immediately, entering billions of different codes with each passing second in attempt to crack the code to the computer. About 16 seconds passed before the left screen flashed green, reading her the passcode. "NEWTERESA... Can't say I'm surprised...", she said to herself, and then swiftly turned around to look at the room around her. The Datascape rendered in front of her, pasting triangular labels above the other computers in the room and circles above every object in the room which was irrelevant to what she was doing. A faded square floated where inactive parts of the Datascape existed, and would activate if she triggered some sort of mechanism. There were many of these squares. Snapping her fingers with a grin, all the triangular symbols she saw strobed green, and instantly all the computers in the room unlocked for her. "I just love that...", she said, basking in the old pleasure of being in control of everything she saw. It was something she was used to, and somehow was something she had never grown tired of. Ellis turned back around to face the computer screen.

Her chip lit up a HUD in her vision, but at the moment it was minimal. All she could see was her Breaching reticule for interacting with the Datascape, a chip and brain activity meter for measuring how much effort she was putting into the task at hand, and a respiratory monitor to warn her of when she needed to use her respirator. Seeing it lit yellow, she took the respirator from her side and pulled the elastic strap over the back of her head so the plastic mouth and nose covering was against her face. Looking at the screen in front of her, she seemed to be in front of the ship's navigational and maintenance logs. Since all data of this sort was sent to a main storage processor of some sort, all she had to do was send a digital worm to track where that processor was so she could read it's contents from where she sat. The ship didn't seem to have a firewall of any sort, which was a bit odd. Maybe the programmers didn't predict someone was going to hijack the ship? Ellis shrugged off the thought and sent her Breaching slaves to work. In her left eye, she saw a yellow line run below the computer she sat and and expand toward the center of the ship. This was a representation of how much she had Breached through, and it seemed to be going rather quickly. After a minute, she saw a large yellow cube light up a few floors below. A flashing green line began to run back the path the yellow line had taken, faster than before. Information was being run back up to her, and she felt her mind dim a bit as the streaming safeguards automatically came on. If it weren't for those, the upload of information to her mind would probably paralyze her body and cause her to die of... Well, there were many possible ways of dying when your body didn't respond to anything your brain said. She guessed a while ago that she would die of lack of blood flow first, and if not that, suffocation. She felt the uplink with the ship's information bay, and her facial expression darkened into a blank stare into empty space.

With her chip giving her the ability to read as fast as the computers around her could process, she saw many things in the ship's archives. At first it was all gibberish about who had eaten what on what day and a few reports on the ship's overall status. Setting in extra filters to find what she wanted, her chip began to sort through and search for information. She began to find very... Strange results. The first thing she found was a report on the ship's location, describing how the ship had stopped in a galaxy completely different from the one the colonists were supposed to land in, and the ship hasn't moved since. The second thing she saw was the in-depth statistics and information on some sort of "bio-bomb" the ship was carrying. Her eyes widened. There was a bomb on the ship? "No way...", she muttered to herself, and lashed her head around to stare into the floor. She focused, and an information worm quickly traveled throughout the ship, sending out Datascape pings as it slid through the wiring of the Arlington. As it traveled, she saw what looked like two open doors facing downward on the bottom of the ship, and what surely was the metal security clamps for holding a large bomb. It had been launched a long time ago, however, and that area of the ship still seemed to be powered down for some reason. Reading the stats on the bomb in a previous check up, she gasped in horror. Ellis turned back around to face her Datascape consols, confused and horrified, and rested her back against the chair's backrest as more information about the ship's activities flooded her mind. The Arlington wasn't just sent to colonize a planet. It was also sent to destroy it's inhabitants.

She couldn't move. She couldn't think. She couldn't understand. Detecting her confusion and lack of focus, the EVA-X disconnected itself from the ship's information database and waited her say something. Ellis gulped, and sat back up in her chair. Looking at her two consoles, she saw the one on the left had stopped feeding information, and the one on the right awaited a command. She turned to look at the room around her. Ellis felt numb both from emotional distress and from being so deep in the ship's aged database. The looked to the main screen, and saw the faint blue outline of a planet to the starboard side. The Datascape screens moved around so they would still be in front of her, and she scrolled up through the left screen to make sure she read everything right. They were dead. They were all. Dead. Every last one of them. Dead. The silence in the room weighed down on her shoulders as the minutes passed her by. "ARE YOU ALRIGHT, ELLIS?" Her chip read out in bold text right in front of her. In a lash of anger and vengeance, Ellis whipped out her Watch-Tower Sword, and with a madman's scream, slashed the text from in front of her as well as slicing straight through part of the railing leading up to the captain's seat. The rail fell into two in front of her, and clanged to the ground. Ellis fell to her knees with them in tears and cried her eyes out. Why had this happened? Why did the Teresa government want to do such a thing? While Ellis was on her knees, her chip had detected where she had looked and re-programmed the ship's main screen to look out of a starboard camera.

And there floated the sapphire atmosphere of Eopi, reflecting the blinding light of the local star.

Wiping the tears from her face, she calmed herself and stood. There wasn't any room to cry now, nor was there any reason. She managed to persuade herself into believing that it was meaningless to grieve for them, the Eopians, due to the fact that they were all 500 years gone. She had to focus on saving herself and everyone else who remained on the ship. She looked down to the sword in her right hand. The Watch-Tower Sword was her weapon of choice when combatting in close quarters, due to it's ability to absorb the kinetic energy from any impact the blade caught, transferring the impact into ultrasonic vibrations which would slice through most medium armors like a hot knife through butter. She hadn't used the weapon much, but the few times she did, it had saved her every time. The one thing it lacked, however, was a program for blocking fast moving objects like bullets and the like. She had tried creating a program for completing such a task, but has had no luck so far. It wasn't one of her top priorities back on Teresa, so she didn't work on it much. She was about to slide her sword away when she heard a yell from the main lift. "Come on! You stupid! Fucking! Wires!", someone yelled, then seemed to calm down after a few seconds. He must've only been a few floors below, and could probably hear her through the thin glass barriers. Ellis kneeled behind a raised floor of the bridge to protect herself and held her sword ready. She was on the opposite side of the room and couldn't do much with only a melee weapon, so it was a gamble. She hadn't heard the voice before from the security consoles, so she knew that this person was a potential hostile. Her chip knew what was happening, and switched her view of the Datascape into a more tactical one for Free Running. From the lift, he would only have a limited shooting angle since it opened into a hallway. Should whoever's in the lift start shooting, she could either take cover where she was or dive out to the right where the man wouldn't be able to shoot due to the hallway's one-person walkway, then move up from behind the consoles to meet him face to face with her sword. She didn't want to make any enemies, however. Ellis yelled just loud enough for whoever was in the lift to hear her. "Who goes there! Speak your name!", she yelled in question, a slight bit of anger still in her voice from just a few moments earlier.

After a minute of waiting and hearing the lift stop at a lower level, Ellis sighed and stood up from her cover. She hadn't gotten a response from whoever or whatever was in the lift, but she guessed that maybe he or she didn't hear her. She slid her Watch-Tower Sword away and checked around the room one more time. Everything was still as it was. With a sigh, Ellis looked around the consols for other bits of information she hadn't found right away. One of the computer screens showed a large radar which used both sonar and light to find surrounding asteroids and such, but the results were at least thirty seconds late. By the time the radar picked up something, that same object would be passing the ship. Currently, the radar wasn't picking up anything. On another screen across the room, she saw the security monitors reacting as they usually did. The Datascape outlined the screens, and brought up the camera results into the air. She saw that the group of people were just entering the grav lift... And not only that, but the group had grown by three people. One appeared to be ESF, and was wearing a Combat Engineering suit. Two girls had also joined the group, one of them was gripping a knife hilt and twitching like she had fleas or something, and the other was probably freezing due to the light clothing she wore. Then again, both of the girls seemed to be treading lightly. Looking over her own cloths, Ellis saw that she was wearing the same dark jeans, white t-shirt and grey jacket she normally would wear when her friends would film her free running. Back on Teresa. With her friends. All dead. She squeezed her eyes shut and rapidly scratched her head, attempting to forget the past once more, and turned away from the security screens. When she opened her eyes, she saw the image of Eopi floating on the main screen. It seemed to be summer there now, since the atmosphere was brighter than normal and it was possible to see the cities on the surface far below.

"...Well... Now what...", she asked herself, removing the respirator from her face and clipping it back to her side. She had gotten to the bridge safely without any conflicts, and had learned the horrible demise of Eopi and it's citizens. She had learned that nearly all of the colonists who had come on the voyage had been killed, though she didn't yet know what had caused their deaths or their disappearances. She also knew that this was caused by a person, who is either still on the ship or had long since killed himself. The turrets couldn't have shot the ship's main view camera without some sort of manual command to do so. At least, Ellis hoped that kind of thing couldn't happen. She didn't have any authority to arrest machines that were killing each other.

She sat in a chair on the right side of the room, in front of a panel reading the ship's general status. Glancing over the information, she saw that the repair drones had long been deactivated, leaving the ship to rot in space. Because of this, the hull was obviously deteriorated at 70% of it's original strength, with the weaker-built parts of the ship already falling apart. The various communication systems across the outside of the ship were all unresponsive, and a few of the many shuttle launch tunnels were either jammed or stuck closed. Many of the solar wing panels on the sides of the ship were shattered or frozen over. The ship's dual propulsion engines were also frozen from inactivity, and jump starting them meant severely damaging the alloy chassis and armor plating keeping it held together due to sudden heat change. In fact, turning them on at all would warp the metal to a point where the engines could become ineffective. The ship's 4 supporting engines were the only parts of the ship which hadn't been damaged, and seemed to still be active and in standby. In summary, it was obvious that the Arlington would fall apart at the seams if it didn't make landfall soon. Her chip was obviously wrong on that estimate, due to how well things were built back in the time when Terasa still had metal to build from. It would take decades, perhaps centuries still, before the Arlington lived it's last day in the unforgiving void of space.

Ellis stood from her chair, and went back to the computer she had first hacked. While browsing the ship's databank, she had noticed an unusually large amount of information had clogged up an entire quarter of the storage, and had to specifically avoid it to keep her chip from slowing down due to the intake of data. She brought the Datascape up in front of her, and sent down another worm to scavenge the files. While this was being processed, she took out the laptop she had taken with her from it's backpack-like casing and set it up. It ran on a self-recharging energy source, so it would never have to be replaced unless it were broken or somehow hacked. Somehow. Now skimming some of the files, her eyes widened as she saw that there was at least 10 terabytes of information including... Well, what seemed to be everything humanity had discovered in science. It had very detailed information on every brand of chip on and off the market, every mathematical and scientific formula, every design to every machine ever invented... Everything. All Ellis could do was stand there, dumbfounded, as her chip started downloading all the important information from the databank to her 500 terabyte laptop, which far outdated the ship's 40 terabyte databank. "B-but that doesn't make any sense... They wanted to kill us after killing the Eopians... So why did they provide all of this information to us...?"

After a minute or so, the upload to her laptop had finished, and quickly slid it back into it's backpack case. Her backpack was only made large enough to fit the laptop, and had extra padding for protection. Ellis scratched the back of her head and thought of the situation. Things seemed to get stranger and stranger as time went on. Turning to face the ship status computer, she was about to get into the advanced details of the Arlington's condition when she heard the grav lift start moving again. Glancing toward the lift entrance, she reached back and pulled the Watch-Tower Sword from it's casing once more. The lift sounded as if it were only on the floor below. The drag against the casing made a very faint ringing noise from the blade, and she became less tense as she focused on the soothing tone of humming metal. "Here we go...", she said, entering a less hostile stance so the people on the lift wouldn't go off shooting her instantly. Just in case, however, she tilted her stance so her feet were facing sideways to nearby cover, legs bent in a running stance. If things did get bad, she would be able to dash straight into cover. She breathed in, breathed out, and waited for the lift to open.

Albrecht Messer did his best to control his breathing as the lift ascended. Engineer MacCreedy stood ready next to him, Mr. Jones was behind them, and cramped into the back wall were the sisters. The small space was incredibly alive with emotions. He could almost taste the anticipation in the air. No one spoke. He could feel sweat beginning to bead on his forehead, his palms were becoming wet inside his gloves. There was something about the atmosphere in that cramped lift, it reminded him of the way he had felt during his very first mission. Somehow, he felt like a fresh fish again, anxious and fidgety. If it was simply the emotions of the people around him affecting him, or after-effects from cryosleep, he couldn't be sure. But the thought of what could be waiting for them in the Bridge shook him to his core.

He steeled his mind against such thoughts; he was an Enforcer for god's sake, he would hold the line and die with his Lucius roaring if it came to that. Memories of the countless, faceless drugged gang-bangers and would-be terrorists whose lives he had cut short fluttered through his mind. They said that you remembered the face of every man you killed in combat. Maybe that was just a soldier thing, because he couldn't recall any faces. All he could recall was the feeling of pure, righteous and lawful satisfaction he felt after their deaths. He smiled under his ballistics mask. It didn't matter if the Devil himself was reclining in the captains' chair when those doors opened, he would take at least one 8 gauge blast before he stand up from his throne.

"No one is to fire unless I give the order, or if you feel yourself to be personally threatened." He stated as the lift abruptly halted.

The soft arrival tone dinged, Messer and MacCreedy glanced at each other, then raise their weapons. The doors slid open, but what stood behind them was not the Devil. Instead, a blatantly pink haired girl who looked young enough to still be taking Pre-Calculus stood nonchalantly in front of the lift. A beautiful Japanese form blade grasped in her delicate hand. Honestly, how these people managed to get all these unregistered weapons onto the Arlington baffled him. In any other situation, it would have been comical; a teenaged girl with a sword facing down two armored Enforcers carrying a plasma rifle and a shotgun, a hedonistic tramp with a hand-held cannon, a twitchy girl with a knife and a clinically calm woman with a handgun. But at the moment, it wasn't funny at all.

For a moment, no one moved a muscle. Then, Messer realized that if they didn't get off the lift soon, the doors would close again automatically. Any respect this girl might have for two armored ESF Enforcers would go down the drain if they just stood there and let the doors close without saying anything at all. So he took a step forward into the Bridge, keeping the barrel of his shotgun trained on the girl. It was an unnatural thing to do, but he wasn't about to get killed because he felt bad about possibly scaring a teenager.

"So you're our little lock-smith? Who are you Colonist?"

In any other situation, Messer would have demanded that she drop her weapon and spill her guts to him or be slapped with all sorts of reprimands. Tampering with Expeditionary equipment, unauthorized weapons possession, unauthorized Bridge entry, unauthorized weapon IN the Bridge (a real doozey), there was enough there to put her in the Brig for the rest of the expedition. In fact, there was enough going against her to warrant a summary execution right on the spot. However, given what was going on, Albrecht really couldn't blame her. What he had said was enough.

Ellis's grip tightened on her blade as the grav lift's doors slid open. She could tell how tense she was merely by the feeling of her grip on the blade. It was too rigid, almost shaking as the colonists stepped out of the lift. Unsurprisingly, it appeared that the ESF Officer was leading the group of survivors at the moment. She breathed out, letting her grip falter just enough to allow her to gain full control over the blade, and focused on each colonist one at a time. Her chip got straight to work at the subconscious command, activating her Epsilon-4 program and scanning everything in front of Ellis to determine possible actions for her to take with the situation at hand. She didn't want to take too much time on scanning the group, knowing that her chip was still recovering, so she set the Epsilon-4 program to quick scan. The ESF Officer, Messer, was the only one in the group without any chip implants, making him hard for the EVA-X to scan. It was easily able to recognize the flakgun in his hands, however, and gauged a hit radius. The Officer had been smart and decided to already have it pointed straight in at Ellis, and she knew full well that her Watch-Tower Sword couldn't block the blast from a flak shell. Focusing behind the Officer, she saw two sisters at the back of the lift; one with an obviously glitched chip and a jumpy reaction program, the other seemed all too calm with a handgun. Near the middle stood Laiden, holding an oversized Condor cannon that could probably blow a hole through a block of steel, and next to him was an Engineer wearing a full body suit and holding a plasma rifle. Upon seeing the Engineer, she made a slight frown and tilted her head in confusion. Why did he seem so familiar for some reason?

"So you're our little lock-smith? Who are you, Colonist?", Messer said. Ellis blinked twice, turning her Epsilon-4 program off and quickly skimming the results over on the Datascape. They were all survivors, and were not of any obvious threat. Checking her respiratory status and seeing it still in the green, she took a deep breath and lowered her sword a bit more. "Do I really look like I could nab you from all the way over here, Officer? Lower your gun, please..." She said, referring to the fact that she was strictly close range with only her on-hand blade. "My name's Ellis Allven, one of the... Survivors... Of this voyage.", her voice faltered toward the end, finding the title "colonist" to not be an appropriate ranking anymore. She spun her blade around quickly and slid it back into it's casing, and looked toward the main screen. When Ellis turned, her second blade was now visible from the angle she was standing at. Looking at Eopi once more, she felt the burning rage inside of her try to rise up once more. She restrained herself with a slight shiver. "I was able to get a good idea on what happened... But before you ask... You'll want to look at what's outside.", she said. Ellis walked over to another computer and opened a file containing a summary of what happened. Her chip notified Ellis that she was starting to get hungry, but she ignored the warning and moved on.

Opening the summary she had created, she brought it onto the datascape and read it from the air in front of her. "As you all know, we launched from Teresa at the year 2132 aboard the colony ship Arlington. The journey was originally supposed to last about 50 years, bringing us to pass Eopi and into another galaxy to settle on planet Rivina. Obviously..." She paused, and motioned to the live feed of Eopi on the main screen. "...That didn't happen. The year, according to the Arlington, is now about 2632. Five hundred years have passed since our launch from Teresa." She let the urgency of the situation set in. "Five hundred years. Which means, for at least four hundred and fifty years, the Arlington, along with it's passengers, have floated here with it's engines dead and the ship itself stuck in the orbit of Eopi. And there's no easy way for me to put this, but... The Arlington's real purpose was to be the carrier of a special bomb used to destroy all the inhabitants of Eopi without damaging the planet itself." Ellis had to pause and step up her FocUs program to keep herself from having another breakdown. "The details of the bomb are... Unclear. But whatever it was made to do... It worked. The ship's system has long ago confirmed the destruction of the Eopian race..." She trailed off, but her words were deathly clear. She scrolled far down the summary, skipping the unimportant parts, then throwing the summary out of her way entirely for anyone else to read should they be interested. "We need to find a way off the Arlington as soon as possible. The ship is falling apart around us with every passing minute, and I'm afraid for the well being of the Arlington's oxygen supply.", she finished, and noticing her respiration status flashing yellow, she brought her respirator up and over her head, and began to breathe through it again. She looked to the group, and waited for a response.

"Try to stay awake then MacCreedy, until told otherwise you and me are still on-duty. If you fall asleep on patrol, you'll have a court-martial on your hands.", Messer said to Charles, who replied with a quick "Yes sir" under his breath. He was still shaken from whatever the heck happened in the lift and almost being shot by his fellow Officer, and steadied his breath as the grav lift loaded its passengers for the ride up. He looked over the group again and let out another self-calming sigh. Aside from the smoker in the group, everyone seemed friendly enough, at least with Messer taking charge. Looking up through the glass roof of the lift, he saw the curved ramp along the roof of the shaft signifying the topmost floor of the ship: the Bridge. Looking back down through the thicker glass floor below, he saw a very, very long drop into darkness. The idea of falling through the floor hadn't exactly frightened him until now, and he was even more frightened on the fact of how old the ship was. Circuits all around have probably been frayed and destroyed by time as the hull of the ship has, and at this point, shit could hit the fan anytime. As the lift approached the Bridge, he readied his Tycho rifle for whatever was ahead, and aimed around Messer as not to hit him should some kind of terrorist start shooting back. Terrorist, he thought to himself, what am I thinking? He shook his head a bit to wake up, and took aim at the lift doors.

"No one is to fire unless I give the order, or if you feel yourself to be personally threatened.", Messer ordered, and Charles remembered to take his finger off the trigger. Pointing his finger forward and pressed against the trigger guard, he nodded in conformation as the lift suddenly halted. Glancing to Messer, who had glanced back to make sure he was ready, they got ready to fire at the unknown within. The doors slid open, and Charles thought he saw Messer in his peripheral vision take a step forward to either assume point or just to keep the lift doors from closing. Focusing back to what was in front of him, Charles almost immediately tilted his gun lower at what he saw was in the room. All that stood in the middle of the room was a teenage girl with hair dyed pink, holding some sort of Japanese sword. He noticed that the girl was slowly looking them over as they entered, standing her ground and unmoving as if she were a statue. She then focused her gaze directly on Charles, and he felt a tingling in his head. It felt very familiar for some reason, the almost unnoticeable feeling of having his mind probed for information. He realized that it must've been his chip being Breached, but it hadn't set off any alarms to him on what was happening. Gazing into the Datascape in front of him and looking at his chip's overall status, his chip firewall showed no signs of being Breached... At least, not by unknown sources.

The girl spoke, locking her eyes with Messer's, tilting her blade a bit to the side. "Do I really look like I could nab you from all the way over here, Officer? Lower your gun, please..." Charles lowered his gun a few seconds after, and looked the girl over again. Pink hair and matching pink eyes wasn't a very common occurrence, and Charles couldn't see any signs of her hair being dyed recently. In fact, hair dye was tested in cryofreeze and was said to turn deadly during the defrosting process, so it was obvious that her natural hair color was in fact pink. As he searched his memories, he remembered someone very close who had pink hair like her's. "My name's Ellis Allven, one of the... Survivors... Of this voyage.", she said, and Charles nearly dropped his gun at the name. It couldn't have been her, the same person who he had spent countless days with in the hospital? Charles now lowered his gun completely, slinging it to his side, and used his chip to help him search his memories. The name Ellis Allven appeared across many pages of his memory dating back to when he was just six years old. Is this really how long I've known this girl for?, he thought to himself as he looked through his past. As he read page after page at speeds far impossible from someone without a chip, he found out that his father and her father knew each other since college, and have worked together ever since. His chip compiled a summary of all that he remembered.

When Ellis was born six months after Charles was born, it was found that she had some sort of rare disease and was to be killed immediately to prevent its spread. Both fathers were able to prevent her from being slaughtered at birth, but they couldn't stop the testing they did on her. As far as his memory knew, all but one of the tests they did on her wouldn't have undesirable long-term effects. The one that did affect her was a test of her mental capacity with and without a chip, and as it turned out, Ellis's father had to spend millions finding a chip that would work fast enough for Ellis to use. Normally, chips were factory built to fit the general IQ and mental processing speeds for most people around the world. Ellis was different, which was easily proven by the many chips she went through and blew out throughout the first two years of her life. It was a miracle that the blow outs didn't kill her, even more so that she didn't suffer mental scarring as a result. When her father finally found a chip that would work for her, scientists were highly skeptical of the choice he made, which was never made public. The disease left Ellis with a nearly collapsed rib cage and a shredded pair of lungs to breathe with, and lived in the ER for over five years until they healed with the help of expert medical workers and students from the nearby Mountainview College. Charles was first introduced to Ellis when he was six, however he'd never seen her awake until half a year later. She was constantly breathing through a respirator, so it was hard for her to talk when he was able to get out of school to spend time with her. At 10, Ellis took her first breath of fresh air while sitting in a wheelchair outside the hospital, and a year later, was able to go to school. Through the will of both fathers, they went to the same school from the sixth grade onward, but Ellis and Charles only ever had PE together for some reason. It was probably because Ellis was so knowledgeable already with the chip she had that she didn't need another five or six classes, but Charles never really found out for sure. All Ellis could do until she was a sophomore was sit in the bleachers or do stretches while the other students either ran circles or played soccer or something. Some students would make fun of her, others would stand by her side no matter what happened. As she reached 11th grade at age 16, she was finally cleared for physical activities, and she went right to work at getting her strength up. Despite the worries and warnings from her doctors, Ellis was able to turn into the athlete her mother always dreamed of her being within the coarse of her 11th grade year.

He realized that he had his Datascape feed set to public, and he quickly pulled himself out of his memories and set his feed back to private. By now, the entire group knew that Charles knew Ellis, but at this distance, Ellis wouldn't have known about the flashback he had. At least, I hope not., he thought to himself. As he looked up from his downward gaze, he saw that Ellis was finishing up some sort of explanation of going on, and had thankfully not been blasted to bits by Messer or Laiden. Everyone had already exited the lift, and with a sigh, Charles followed. Looking up at the main screen to see what was outside, he saw Eopi on the starboard side of the ship. Ellis spoke again, and Charles looked to her as she spoke. "We need to find a way off the Arlington as soon as possible. The ship is falling apart around us with every passing minute, and I'm afraid for the well being of the Arlington's oxygen supply.", she said before pulling a compact respirator over her mouth. Charles looked her over, seeing how much she's aged in the past few years, then looked to a blank computer screen to look himself over in the reflection. "Man, the changes we go through...", Charles said to himself as he saw the mask of the Engineering suit gaze back at him, it's expression unreadable to Charles or anyone else.

Giving that speech felt awkward, Ellis had to admit, and at first there was only silence. Silence, save for one of the ESF officers who had murmured to himself. The other officer looked back to the one who muttered, then back to Ellis before speaking again. "I see. It would be in our best interest to get off the Arlington as soon as possible", he said and lowered flak gun, leading the group into the Bridge with an air of leadership. Messer and the two sisters began to look around, however before anyone knew it, Laiden had managed to disappear through one of the staircases leading back down to where they had come from. As Ellis went to check another computer, Messer spoke up again. "So you mean to tell us that the Arlington is some sort of doomsday bomb carrier?", he said. Ellis brought up a schematic of the ship on the computer she had gone to and displayed photos of the opened bomb doors on the underside of the ship, directing Messer to see. She removed her respirator so she could speak. "That is what I just said, is it not?", she replied, backing up so Messer could scroll through information on the screen. One of the two sisters spoke up as Ellis sat in the Captain's chair, pulling up information on the hangar bay. They DID need to get off the Arlington, after all, and they'd need a landing craft to do just that. The Captain's Datascape would supply her with every last detail of each and every ship in the bay.

As status logs came and went, the results began to look dimmer and dimmer. She found out at first that the fuel for the landing crafts was taken directly from the Arlington's fuel supply, and over time, the fuel had been burned away by both idling engines and damaged reserves leaking fuel. There were only a few emergency ships that were currently loaded with fuel, however those ships had also been damaged by time and age to a point where they wouldn't make it to the surface. Collapsed hangar bays and launch tubes were also a problem, leaving only three available escape craft. Ellis brought up the ship's automated repair crew and ordered them to prepare one of the escape craft for takeoff, using parts from other damaged ships to fortify the craft for landfall. After doing this, she downloaded an emergency flight manual to her EVA-X which would run her through takeoff and flight procedures if and when she would fly the landing craft to Eopi with the others.

Speaking of the others, Ellis got up from the chair she sat in and looked around. Messer was talking to the sisters, and the other Officer was watching the main view screen displaying Eopi. She looked over a few other screens, and with another hunger warning from her EVA-X pestering her, she decided that getting something to eat before landfall would be a good idea. "I'm going to get something to eat. A ship's being prepped in Hangar F-4 to get off the ship and will be ready in an hour. I'll see you all there." she said, displaying a map on the Datascape using her chip, then went to the grav lift and made her way to the mess hall. A few minutes later, she was eating a slice of heated french bread she had found frozen in the ship's food banks, enjoying her first meal in five hundred years. And it was delicious. Who knew bread could taste so good? Letting the butter melt in her mouth, she swallowed the rest of her food and took a few more heated slices with her to the grav lift. The grav lift began descending toward the hangar bay as she finished her bread, but halfway down it suddenly stopped, causing Ellis to fall forward a bit as it stopped. Muttering a curse, she looked up to the lift's ceiling and told the EVA-X to breach the lift's gravity stabilizer to fix the problem. "The ship's in even worse state than I thought...", she said to herself before a sharp budge from the lift startled her and forced her forward again. The doors openned to the hangar bay, and Ellis sighed with relief as she exited. "Whew... Thought I'd drop all the way down for a sec-", she said, turning around to see the lift had disappeared after the doors closed, a loud crash moments later forcing her to grip her hands out of fear of what could have happened to her.

Ellis turned from the lift after a minute of standing and walked her way to the ship which was being prepped for liftoff. It was an 8-person Swan class carrier craft normally used for transport of space miner personal, but was augmented for usage in planetary landfall. Opening the back door and climbing in, she saw that the interior was similar to that of a VIP jet back on Teresa. She walked down the middle isle, past the inwardly faced chairs and information screens, and sat in the pilots seat in the cockpit. There was fifteen minutes until liftoff, but she wanted to make sure that everything was alright with the ship before takeoff. The Swan was equipped with a Datascape-only piloting system for the main pilot and a manual system for the co-pilot to be enabled if the Datascape should fail out. The EVA-X began to sort through screens and run engine tests for propulsion and rotation while Ellis ordered the repair drones to fuel and power her ship. As they did this, her chip reported back positive results from the engines, and began to pressurize the fuel for takeoff. The drones connected refueling tubes to the Swan, and she noticed the fuel gauge only go up to 55% before stopping. Irritated with the lack of fuel available, she ordered the drones to put the refueling equipment away and to finalize repair operations. Looking in front of her, she saw the ship HUD begin to format itself and plot the path she would drive the Swan to in order to line up with the launch tube. The shield indicator appeared on the side of the HUD, notifying her that the drones have installed a Targe anti-atmosphere shield which the ship would activate upon landfall operations. The drones put themselves away after another minute, and the launch door blinked red in front of her.

Everything was ready for liftoff. She would only need to wait for the others. Little did she know that Charles would be the only one to make it to the Swan in time.