Rakion Galaxy

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.

Images were constantly swirling throughout Laiden's head. Flashes from his life, his greatest regrets. his greatest tragedies. All of his memories seem to have been loaded into 50 Caliber Turret and then fired at him at blinding sppeds. He was being pelted in the face by things that he had hoped to never see again. His heart beat skyrocketed to dangerous levels. The beat was deafening. It played like a demented underscore to the onslaught of his memories. Even though all the images were daunting in their own right, there was one that seemed to keep returning no matter how many times Laiden tried to force it away.Pink... He thought tot himself. His heart beat increased even more at the thought of that word, and it seemed it was too much for him. His eyes suddenly burst open and his arms lashed out violently. He felt pain but saw nothing. He heard the breaking of glass and metal. Suddenly he was stumbling around, crashing into other metal objects and shattering glass. His eyes had yet to focus. He breathed heavily and his heart felt like it was about to explode out of his chest. Suddenly, his left eye came on and he saw a dark room. He could barely process anything he was seeing, he only had one thing on his mind at the moment. "WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY CIGARETTES!!" His eye suddenly began sweeping the room at all angles, searching through every nook and cranny. Until finally, he found what he was looking for. Behind him in a crate was the prize he sought. HE spun around and dove at the box, ripping the lid from its hinges. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes, ripped it open, and threw two into his mouth. HE then grasped for his lighter, eventually his hands finding the familiar grooves and edges of his zippo. He whipped it out and lit both of them and took a deep and long drag on both of them. His heartbeat started to slow down and his body went flaced. He slumped down on the incredibly cold floor in the dark room, finally coming to his senses.

He finished up his cigarettes and finally opened his eyes to see just where the hell he was. He looked around and saw his cryopod that he had apparently forced himself out of. Laiden looked down at his hands, seeing his chip was already sealing his wounds. He reached into his nag and puled another cigarette forth and put it into his mouth and lit it. Slowly savoring the heavenly flow of nicotine into his lungs and back out again. He switched to dark vision and saw the room more clearly. Cryopods had been ripped from the walls and there were dead bodies everywhere. But......not enough to fill all of the pods in this room. In fact.....most of them were missing. This as too damn weird. He reached into the storage chest and ulled his bag out full. He unzipped it fullly, revealing about 30 cartons of cigarettes. He dug his hand through it and pulled out two cartons. He opened them both up to reveal to black plastic cases. He opened those up to reveal his beloved pistols, Right&Wrong. He then grabbed four more cartons and opened them up to reveal similar black cases. Inside these however, wer dozens of slug rounds. He began loading them into his pistol, then onto his person. After that was done, he recached into his bag once more, this time carefully feeling the side. He smiled when he felt and odd bulge. The sound of Velcro could beheard as he ripped something from within. What he pulled out was long and covered in a mix of tin foil and plaster. He ripped off the covering to reveal a sheathed blade. He smiled and strapped it to his back. Standing, he pulled out a belt with two holsters from his bag of tricks and put that on as well. He holstered his pistols and slung his bag over his shoulder. Now, he was ready.

As he moved about the room toward the grav lift, he was scanning the bodies to see if any of them lived. All of their vital signs were negative. When he passed the body of an aged frozen black man, he noticed something odd about the date of death. It didn't make any sense. He then checked the date on his eye. He stood there for a moment in silence. "Well...........shit." He gave a quick shiver, whether it was from the cold or his own acceptance, he wasn't sure.

He finally made it to the grav lift and decided to take it all the way to the top. He passed all of the other cryo chambers on his side of the ship, not really interested in checking them out. When the door opened, he was surprised to see that some of the lights were still on. The ship seemed to still have power, and from the sound of the hull, they were still in space. What had happened to the ship? Where was the crew? Or anyone for that matter? All of these questions and more become secondary when his eye landed on a sign that said "Mess Hall His stomach rumbled and he immediately set out for it. When Laiden set his eyes on the Mess Hall, he saw that the term was a double entendre. It was trashed, it wasn't horrible, most things just had fallen over. He poked through a few bins, revealing nothing. He started to lose hope when he saw something below a collapsed cabinet. He pushed it off to reveal a small metal tin box. He opened it up to reveal several freeze dried food items. He looked through them. Freeze dried apples, milk, and.....apples. It was mainly apples and few milk tubes. It was a hell of a lot better than nothing. He picked it up and walked it over to a downed table, which he then put upright. Laiden placed the box down an and pulled a chiar over to the table. He pulled out Wrong and placed it down on the table, pointing towards the entrance, just in case anything came through. He plopped himself down on the chair, lit up another cigarette, and began to chow down.

Albrecht Messer woke up abruptly. It wasn't the smooth, gradual return of consciousness that normally signaled awakening from cryo-sleep. Instead, it was like being suddenly dropped into a lake of ice water. It took him a few moments to realize that he was awake, and that something was terribly wrong. First of all, it was ungodly cold, like nothing he had ever felt before. So cold that it felt like his skin was on fire. Secondly, he was suffocating.

The ESF cryopods were constructed so that the person inside rested vertically; so that they could be awakened immediately and be ready for action in case of an emergency. Messer hit the hatch release button located by his right hand, but nothing happened. He tried again, nothing. Fear churned in his stomach, his hands started to shake. He found the manual release lever on the door and yanked it back, releasing the cryopod's lock with a metallic creak. He pulled up every ounce of fear powered, primal strength in his body and released it all into his arms as he strained against the door. The door opened a hair's breadth, and then fell open completely.

Mess fell out of the pod onto the ice cold floor. He lay there for a few moments, sucking in stale air. He made a mental note to find out who came up with the idea of a manual release for the ESF pods, and thank them. He wore a simple, skin tight shirt and shorts made of a synthetic material. He also wore the same foot covers, basically just socks with soles, made out of the same material. He pulled himself onto his feet and looked around. It was quite a scene, the pods around him were smashed and shattered, cut tubes hung from the ceiling, pouring out freezing cold gases. The inhabitants of the other ESF pods hung limp and lifeless, slumped over the broken glass or reclined in their pods.

The protocols that had been drilled into him since recruitment began to take effect. Something had gone terribly wrong on the ship, there were causalities. That meant his primary course of action now would be to secure his equipment and do whatever it took to get the situation under control. He made his way to the end of the hallway, ghosting his way as best he could past the cold bodies. He had no idea what could have caused this, but he did know one thing.

Cryopods didn't just blow open on their own.

At the end of the hallway was a large metal door, the letters ESF emblazoned in blue across it. A device was set into the wall beside it, it was a keypad, along with what looked like a glowing blue eye. The ESF distributed new passwords to its enforcers every time they were awakened with the rest of the crew for maintenance. Messer typed in the last code he could remember, then allowed the blue "eye" to scan his own retina.

The door slid open almost silently. The entire room seemed immaculate, nothing was out of place. The armor lockers, the gun racks, nothing was missing. Obviously, whatever had happened while he had been sleeping, no other enforcers had made it to this room. The thought made a cold sweat break out down his back. The first thing he did was close the door behind him.

He suited up as quickly as he could, first pulling on the mesh one piece body-suit, then putting on his armor piece by piece. After what seemed like a ridiculous amount of time, Mess buckled on his helmet and boots and strode over to the gun rack. He grabbed a Lucius 98 and shoved as many drum magazines as he could carry into the pouches belted on his waist. He also picked up a service pistol and holstered it at his thigh.

He slid a drum magazine into his Lucius and worked its slide. He needed to figure what was going on, and fast. He opened the supply room door, and slunk into the cold hallway once more. His duty now would be to find whoever was left alive, and come to grips with the situation. The obvious location for any survivors to congregate would be either the Central Hub or the Bridge, maybe even the Cafeteria.

Really, the only option he had at the moment was to search until he found someone. He made his way back down the hallway he had first come, his Lucius held ready. He was amazed that the grav lift was still operational as he approached it. He was even more amazed to find that it was in use. Glowing numerals counted up as the lift ascended. He heard the lift pass by his floor from within the shaft behind the lift door. He shot his hand out and pressed the lift call button, but he was too late. The lift passed his floor up and continued all the way up to the Hub floor, judging by the flickering numbers above the door.

The numbers stopped on the Hub level. Then, they began to change again, this time counting down. Which meant the lift was coming back down to his floor. Whoever or whatever had been in the grav lift had already exited the lift. Or, they were just waiting inside for the first person unlucky enough to call the lift.

Messer took a few steps back and closed the ballistic shield over his face. He took a deep breath, and leveled his Lucius at the lift door as it slid open.

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.

Messer breathed a sigh of relief as the door revealed an empty lift. Whoever had been inside had gotten off at the Hub level, no mistake. Which presented a delima to Albrecht Mess. Was he going to follow the mysterious lift passenger to the Hub in hopes of tracking them down? Or should he take the lift as far away as possible? Duty warred with instictual fear inside of him; images of the cryopod bodies, frozen and blackened, flashed through his mind.

Messer grimaced and pushed his fear back into the back of his mind. He had job to do. What was the purpose of the ESF if not for situations like this? If there was anyone who could inform him on the ship's current situation, they would be in the Hub. He pressed the button for the Hub level and stamped his booted feet on the floor of the lift, a little confidence ritual he had learned in Germany. The lift door closed, and the small cylindrical glass tube began ascending.

Space was beautiful, a plethora of shining stars against the black curtain. Mess tried not to look though. He was already uncomfortable in these lifts, and the added stress of current events made it worse. He had always distrusted glass, his mind told him it was irrational, but he still didn't like it. He had always been afraid of those big aquariums back on Teresa, the kind you actually walked through in glass tubes. The grav lifts on the Arlington gave him the same sort of feeling.

Mess snapped back into focus as the lift chime sounded, signaling he had reached his floor. The lift door opened, and Mess stepped out into a ghost town. The Hub was designed very much like a shopping mall back on Teresa. This was purposeful, and was designed to make life on board a spaceship much easier for the crew and colonists. The colonization process was not a quick one. In theory, the majority of the colonists would be living on the Arlington for quite some time once they reached the planet called Rivina. So the Hub was designed to be a reminder of home, and it certainly was.

The lift doors hissed shut behind Mess. The place was eerily silent, not just quiet, but silent. It gave off the same kind of atmosphere that the ancient, abandoned buildings Mess had played in as a child did. For some reason, the utter silence of a place obviously designed to be full of life disgruntled him. In some ways, it was even more wrong than the frozen bodies. Something was definitely wrong here, that much was clear.

Messer pushed on down the large lift access hallway, which opened up into the "true Hub". He spotted the Cafeteria across the hall. It seemed as good a spot as any for survivors to congregate, so he made his way over carefully. The doors were glass, and the power was on inside. He was startled at how close he came to the doors before realizing there was a figure sitting inside. He sucked in air through his teeth and pulled away from the doors. He took a deep breath and glanced inside again, the man inside appeared to have not noticed him. He was eating something, which looked like emergency ration packs. Strange, though, given the current situation he didn't know if the Food Staff were even alive anymore.

Messer decided it would be best to try his luck with the man. It was the first person he had seen alive since he woke up, and he may be better informed as to what was going on. He reached his hand out and knocked on the glass.

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

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.

"Yeah, I'm alive. Why don't you come on in Officer. Got apples and milk with your name on it. Name's Rufus Jones. Nice to meet you, Officer."

The voice was flat and cold, and practically dripped with apathy. Immediately, Messer felt his stomach tighten. It was the voice of someone who could strangle babies and smile while doing so. A moments indecision was ended by the sound of every lock in the Hub disengaging at once. Mess swore and swung his shotgun around, backing into the Cafeteria as he did so.

He moved away from the glass doors as he entered, and turned to face the man again. If he had heard the same noise, he didn't show any sign of surprise on his face. He had white hair and a robotic eye, which was interesting and disturbing at the same time. It made a quiet whirring noise as it focused in on him. A huge pistol lay on the table the thin man sat at. In fact, Mess imagined it would look rather silly in the man's hand, like a child holding a normal sized handgun. Still, he had no doubts about its lethality, and it was pointed in his direction. Messer raised the ballistics visor on his helmet and attempted to hold his Lucius in a non-threatening manner.

"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?"

Mess hoped the gaunt man was the reasonable type. He smelled smoke in the room, he sincerely hoped he hadn't been doing hallucinogens in here. Things might get nasty if this guy was stoned. He decided he would try and make his position clear, before letting Mr. Jones reply.

"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."

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.

Instinctively, Messer snatched the man's wrist and pushed it away. He was shocked at how powerful the urge to crush his hand was. He knew that people's inhibitions broke down during catastrophes, but if there was ever someone who personified hedonism in its entirety, it was Mr. Jones. The man had obviously not been raised in a decent home, probably not a real home at all. As he looked into his unfeeling eye, somehow more lifeless than his robotic one, he felt more sorry for him than disgusted. What was the point of being super-human if you lost your humanity?

"I'll have none of that Mr. Jones." He said simply, and took a step back.

"You sound like you've already resigned yourself to death Mr. Jones. That's sad, but it might come in handy. You say its been 500 years since the launch; I don't know if I believe you or not. To honest Mr. Jones, I'm not sure if you are even in your right mind. I do know that there is someone in the bridge that opened all those locks, whether its this girl you say you saw or not. That means my next destination is the bridge, however as an Enforcer of the ESF, it is my duty to protect all registered colonists aboard the Arlington. So, if you want to come with me, I cannot refuse."

Messer closed the visor of his helmet and walked towards the door. He stopped mid-stride and turned back towards the beige and brown garbed man.

"I don't know you or your morals Mr. Jones, but so far your words have left me concerned for your safety. I sincerely hope you do not take any self-destructive actions, and if you do, please be considerate enough to let me continue fighting for my life."

He felt bad for being so harsh, but the last thing he wanted was for this guy to snap and start slinging lead everywhere. He opened the glass door and slid out cautiously. There was no telling what could be out there.

POOM! As his pod popped open, Charles gasped for air, clutching his throat in a futile attempt to open his airways. His body hadn't had time to drain itself before his pod opened, and the life sustaining fluid that filled his lungs and kept oxygen flowing through his blood was purging itself. He coughed up what felt like a gallon of the fluid, standing shakily to his feet, spitting out the rest, and wiping his mouth. He looked around at the carnage that surrounded him. Every pod was burst open, most bodies hung limp and lifeless, but a few lay reclined in their pods, lending an eerie calm to the whole scene.

"Holy shit... What the fuck happened here?" He stood, dumbfounded, for a few moments until he shook himself out of it. He decided the best thing to do would be to report to the bridge and see if anyone was still alive on this tub. However, he also decided that, should anything still be alive in here, especially something with malicious intent, he should get some weapons, and get his armor on. He touched the panels next to his pod and reached inside, pulling out the dark purple jumpsuit that served as his uniform while he was on duty. He zipped up and buckled his empty toolbelt around his waist. He kept most of his tools in his locker in the armory, so he tied off his boots and headed off in that direction.

After a short jog he reached the armory, it was hard to miss. It had the ESF logo emblazoned in big, bold letters right in the middle of the door. He punched in the passcode, and bent down to let the retinal scanner do its job.

"ACCESS GRANTED.", it chimed, and the door slid silently open.

The armory seemed to be in perfect order, but there were small indicators here and there that showed that there had been activity, and recent activity at that. Small warning alarms started firing in his head, but he ignored them. It was no use thinking about what might be. The only thing that mattered was the fact that he was completely defenseless. He walked along the lockers until he came to his own, down at the end of the line. He placed his palm on the bio scanner to unlock his locker, and flung it open. He took out his plasma cutter and placed it in its holster at his hip. He then started assembling his engineering suit. He pulled on the cuirass and there was a small hiss as the mag-locks clamped into place. It was bulky, but it fit like a glove, conforming itself to his body's shape and size. The rest of the armor unfurled itself from the cuirass, until he was fully decked out in his armor. The armor wasn't skin tight or all encompassing, but it was comfortable and afforded him excellent protection from small arms fire. There were vambraces, shoulder pauldrons, gauntlets, greaves, and sabatons. Finally, he depressed a small button on the collar of his cuirass and his helmet unfolded itself from the collar, enclosing his head. The whole thing had a relatively angular, geometric shape to it, and it was bulky, with lots of padding and plating to protect against accidents when he was working with larger, more dangerous repairs.

He was in complete darkness for a few seconds while his HUD booted up. The cameras whirred to life and he looked around, flicking through the different vision modes available to him: First IR, then night vision, then he brought up his glare shield, and finally his circuit finder. They all seemed to be in working order, so he booted his vitals next. His suit's integrity was uncompromised, which was good, and his own biometrics were in working order, except for his core temperature, which was dangerously low. He had been lucky to get into the warmth of the armory when he did. Next he booted up his datascape. A grid was superimposed over his vision while his suit absorbed the relevant data from the surrounding area. A few floating icons popped up as he looked through the environmental data, air pressure was 1.5 Earth atmospheres, and the temperature was low, nearly freezing. There were no toxins in the air, and there were no lifesigns in the immediate area. His calendar was off though, because if what it was telling him was correct, he had been in cryo for nearly five hundred years, which couldn't possibly have been right, his pod opened every few months for his shift in the maintainence rotation.

Charles looked around the armory, and there were weapons aplenty. He decided he should take as much as he could, because judging from his current situation, he probably wouldn't be coming back. He grabbed plenty of extra power cells for his plasma cutter. He then pulled a Lucius pattern shotgun off one of the walls, hooked a few magazines onto his belt for easy access, and filled a few pouches with extra shells for whenever he needed to refill his magazines. He went to the other wall and unlatched a Tycho pattern assault rifle. Pride of the ESF, it was a selective fire assault rifle, designed to fire charged bolts of superheated gas. It used the same principles as his plasma cutter except it was fully automatic, as opposed to single fire. The other marked difference was in the shape of the bolts, while his plasma cutter fired a line of directed plasma, a Tycho fired elliptical spheres of plasma at a devastating rate. The Tycho used two things in its operation, small, long-lasting power cells, and large gas cannisters. The power cells were good for a few thousand shots, but the gas cannisters were only good for about two hundred, and that was on its weakest power setting, if you wanted a real kick, they were good for about fifty. He grabbed about five power cells, and started filling his pouches and pockets with as many gas cannisters as he could. There was already a power cell in the weapon, so he slapped a gas clip into the recess, and it clicked into place. He slung the Lucius over his shoulder, brandished the Tycho, and set off out of the armory.

He had just reached the armory door when he heard something running in the vents above him. He immediately checked his lifesign sensor... There was nothing there... If he wasn't on edge before, he certainly was now.

He stalked through the cryo bay, scanning left and right with his rifle, clearly wired tight. A few pipes burst to his left and he wasted half a mag shooting at nothing. He stopped for a second, catching his breath, "Fuck me! I need to calm the fuck down... I need to get to the bridge... Alright, computer! Plot a course for the bridge. I want the fastest, most direct route available." A few seconds later, a blue, glowing line appeared in front of him and he raced off in the direction that it indicated. He continued on that route for awhile until he came to a grav lift. He turned on the lamps on his helmet and read the plate next to the grav-lift door. It read "Grav-Lift A", and it was the main grav-lift on the ship. It would take him directly to the bridge, but it seemed to be inoperable. The control panel under the "Grav-Lift A" plate was damaged, so he removed the panel and started fiddling with the wires. He pulled up a schematic for the control panel and began sodering the broken wires together to restore its power. After a few minutes, he had it all put back together. He replaced the panel into the wall and it lit up just like it was supposed to. He pressed the up button and the doors on the lift opened. The lights were on, and Charles scanned the lift to make sure that it was clear. He pressed the "Bridge" button on the inside control panel and a little microphone popped out.

A little voice came on over the speakers, "Voiceprint Identification Required."

Charles smacked a gauntleted palm against the side of his helmet. He clicked the button on his collar, and his helmet folded itself away. He leaned in and spoke into the mic, "Voiceprint Identifier, Humanity's Might. Confirm."

The voice came back on, "Voiceprint identifier confirmed, welcome back Engineer MacCreedy."

The doors slid closed and the lift whirred to life. Charles returned his helmet over his head, and backed himself to one of the corners of the lift.

The grav-lift rambled on past a few floors when it suddenly stopped. The lights blinked out, and the air became completely still. Charles heard something above him, coming down the elevator shaft. He needed to get this metal death-trap moving, and fast! He flicked his lamps on, and spotted the problem right away. The motors on the bottom of the lift were malfunctioning. He told his computer to scan the motors for the source of the malfunction, and they found a few burnt out wires that needed to be resoderred. He got down on his hands and knees and removed the floor panelling. He heard a heavy THUMP on the top of the lift and then heard something start scratching at the top panels of the lift, "Shit! Come on! Hurry up!" He found the right wires and immediately began soderring them together. Whatever was above him had started breaking through the ceiling panels and was trying to rip them away, "Come on! You stupid! Fucking! Wires!" It was inside the lift now, and it was right behind him when he finished with the final wires. He could feel it behind him now, and he didn't need the lights to know exactly where it was. He drew his plasma cutter and yelled at the top of his lungs as he turned to face whatever hellish creature was behind him. Suddenly the lights were on, and when he turned, there was nothing behind him. He scrambled to his feet, holding his plasma cutter in front of him, aiming at empty space. He was dumbfounded, as he looked at the ceiling of the lift, where the creature had ripped its way through, there was not even a scratch left to show that anything had even happened. Charles holstered his plasma cutter as the lift whirred back to life. He slumped down in the corner of the lift. He hit his collar to fold his helmet back. He was sweating profusely. He removed one of his gauntlets and wiped the sweat off of his forehead as he rested his head on the lift wall and closed his eyes, "What the fuck is happening to me..." He rested his eyes but did not fall asleep, trying to calm himself down as he rode the lift up through the hundreds of floors on his way to the bridge.

It was a jolt, a stale smell and freezing cold that she awoke too. Nora's medical chip was programmed to preform emergency procedures such as shocks to the heart on herself if necessary but such things were placed on hold for the cryo sleep but now everything was jumping back online. It hurt, in all honesty, her chest felt tight and it was a struggle to open her eyes to only be met with darkness. Her senses were muzzy and nothing made sense until finally one thing struggled up from the mud that was her current mental state. This isn't right.

Immediately she brought her knees up and the glass gave way a bit with a slight spidery crack and she furrowed her brow. That's not right either, pod glass is tough, it shouldn't give away. Why is it weak? Nora didn't take too long to dwell on that fact as she brought her knees up hard into the glass shattering it, making her way out of the pod with a few minor cuts to her arms and face. The lights were off and no one was around. It's cold, too cold. She turned left and right, looking around the vacant room as if that would bring her answers. Her mother and father should have been among the first to be awakened; they would have come to get her and then in turn all three of them would have checked the vitals of the other passengers as they awakened before exiting the ship. Despite the torrent of thoughts flowing through her mind, an impassive expression was plastered onto her face. The only outward sign of her distress was the slight knitting of her brows as she processed everything. Obviously the only thing to do was find someone, the captain, a security personnel, someone.

The dark halls were difficult to navigate as her boots clunked loudly down the metal hallways. “Fuck its cold.” She bit the sentence out between her teeth and rubbed her bare arms, cursing the fact she only wore a sleeveless shirt into the pod. Her chip locked onto a body of its own accord, a medical emergency it deemed but truly there was no emergency to be had. Nora slowly approached the pod, her brow lowering further as the scan readings became more confusing and grave. According to everything she was seeing not only was the man dead but he was long, long dead. It made absolutely no sense, this was a ship, not a tomb. Her mind was re-routed from finding someone in charge to finding a family member and it jumped to the member she remembered being closest to her pod.

She ran down the halls, her face pulled taut in concentration as she tried to puzzle everything out while simultaneously chanting a mantra of please be alive, please be alive. It made no sense why all of her family's pods couldn't be placed into the same room but luckily she'd at least remembered where they'd put Jayn's pod. The more freeze dried corpses she ran by the deeper the pit in her stomach became but still her pace stayed steady as she turned the corner into her sister's pod room, bypassing the other pods to go straight for her sister's. A heartbeat. Brain waves. Alive. She was alive. Nora didn't smile, didn't laugh or cry but her body relaxed and she released a breathe she didn't realize she'd been holding. “You're too stubborn to die.” She muttered to her sister's still sleeping form while tapping in an emergency code on her pod's console to activate the wakening sequence. She gazed down at Jayn for a moment silently before speaking.“Wake up Jayn. Pretty much everyone is dead so obviously something went wrong. We gotta find mom, dad and Aiden. Oh, and uh, maybe some way to not die on the ship. So, hurry up.” It was safe to say Nora wasn't the best at delivering bad news.

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.

“Are we there yet?!” That was the mantra playing through her head when the shock came. Like being dunked in ice water after burning in the sun. Jayn took in a sharp breath as the stale smell and cold hit her senses, her chip demanding her not to move until she could see properly. Slowly her breathing became shallower as she opened her eyes; and there stood Nora, mumbling something, or at least that’s what she could gather while half awake.

Of course it would be her sister to wake her up, but did she have to give her such a dang shock in the process! The wakeup was supposed to be the easiest part! “What the hell kinda doctor are you!” she whispered so no one would overhear… no one… “Wha-What did you just say?” Eyes wide Jayn wipped her head in both directions, paling at the scene of smashed cryopods and dead bodies. And oh heavens, the smell of decay was finally reaching her. It may have been a long passed memory, but the smell will always somewhat linger.

Grabbing onto Nora’s shoulder for support, Jayn steadied herself to stand; clasping tighter to her sister, taking solace in her big sis’s never changing expression of calm. “You’re right,we've gotta find mom and dad. Aiden’s supposed to be between them.” Oh if only she felt as calm as her reasoning. First grab knife from drawer. Buckle it on. Lead the way to their family’s pods. Find them sleeping as peacefully as she herself had been. Wake everyone up to a horror flick happy reunion. Oh if only.

Mist curled at the sister’s feet as they made their way to the next room of pods. All around was destruction. Pod glass littered the floor and crackled under their feet, and bodies hung like ornaments in a haunted house.“This isn’t happening.” Automatically Jayn reached for Nora’s hand, gripping it as hard as she could; maybe some of the stress would roll off her, or Nora’s calm would roll onto her. Yeah right.

Reaching the door to their parents pod’s room, Jayn typed in the code and held her breath for the new shock of stale air, but the breath didn’t stay long as a screamed ripped from her throat once the door opened to the contents inside. Bodies strewn out of their pods, the same scene as the rest of the rooms. But there where the third and fifth pods were, laid two familiar faces, long ashen and darkened in death.

Slowly she made her way toward their bodies, head pounding as the dread and rush of blood ran through her. There was no denying it. Everyone on the ship was dead. Their parents were dead. Everything looked dead. And Aiden… “Nora..”her voice cracked, ”Where’s Aiden’s pod… He’s number four, but where’s his pod?” Dazed as her own voice sounded unfamiliar to her, Jayn looked at her sister and took deep breaths; she would stay calm. Like Nora. “We’ve gotta get to the Bridge. There has to be someone running this… or someone we can call. Something.” Dang it, there goes the voice cracking again.

Swallowing the knot in her throat, Jayn walked straight to her sister’s side and grabbed onto the edge of her tank top as she calmed her breathing back down. With the stressed out state she was in now, she felt ready to grab her knife and take a defense stance at the very smell of the place. But that was the chip, and there was no threat. At least not here.

Nora watched her sister slowly gather her bearings as she awakened and stood from her pod. Even when she asked for Nora to repeat herself she kept her quiet stance as her sister grabbed her shoulder for support. She'd heard what was said, just needed time to process it. It seemed to be psychological; you told an individual something they didn't want to hear and they always asked for the news to be repeated despite the fact they clearly heard the first time. So Nora simply watched her younger sibling with calm eyes; looping a loose arm around her waist when her grip on her shoulder tightened at mentioning finding the rest of their family.

Jayn finally snapped to action and grabbed her knife, took Nora's hand and lead her to where she remembered the rest of their family's pods to be. “This isn't happening.” Nora cut her sister a curious look.“Of course it is. Denial leads to insanity so accept it fully.” She of course realized that her sister wasn't already going insane but bluntness was part of Nora's personality and such phrases slipped out of her mouth regularly. That was the only exchange that was made between the sisters until they finally made it to their family's pod room.
Her sister screamed and slowly approached her parent's bodies. It should have been expected; hoping for happy endings was a silly thing. Always expect the worse so when it happens it isn't much of a shock. Nora stayed at the door, staring at her parent's sunken faces with a pained expression. She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, drew in a tight, stale, unsatisfying gulp of air then opened her eyes as she approached her sister and lay a hand on her shoulder as Jayn brought up their brother's missing pod. She was right, it was gone. “Maybe they moved his pod before launch.” She wouldn't think the best but she also didn't want to think the worst. “We've gotta get to the Bridge. There has to be someone running this...or someone we can call. Something.” Her sister's voice cracked and it was too much for Nora so in an unfamiliar show of tenderness she placed her lips on her sister's head and wrapped her arms around her then began murmuring into her scalp in her familiar calm voice. “In times of crisis you depend on yourself first. We'll go to the Bridge because that's where the main controls are, we'll be able to see the entire ship from there. We'll find Aiden's pod and if there are any other survivors we'll find them too. I'm not going to say everything is going to be okay but you know I'll do my best to keep you safe...you know that right?” She waited a moment to let her sister calm down, to let herself calm down, before beginning a plan.

Her mom and dad were the typical worry warts and had shown Nora and Jayn the escape routes on the ship, one of which included getting to the main bridge. Things like that were annoying then but now, she stopped in the middle of gathering her parent's medical supplies to swallow the lump in her throat. They were gone and emotions didn't help anything, in fact they only hurt the situation. After slinging a pack of her parent's equipment over her shoulder she nodded for Jayn to follow her, but paused in the doorway to take one more look at the bodies. “No one will bother them here.” She said this towards Jayn but possibly as a comfort for herself as well.

It was a lot of walking and the sudden scare of every single goddamn thing coming online at once didn't help Jayn's already frayed nerves. “Just calm down.” Much easier said than done for her little sister and much easier said than done when the faint sounds of voices could be heard ahead. It sounded like men, two of them if she wasn't mistaken. She moved Jayn with her to press against a chilled metal wall and moved cautiously towards the source until they could see the two conversing. One was security which was a huge relief but the other seemed to be a civilian. The officer appeared to be scolding the man for already resigning himself to death which could make him dangerous and while all of this was going on Nora's chip medically evaluated them of its own accord and her eyebrows raised incrementally at the readings she was given on the civilian with the white hair. Nora kept her arm outstretched and over her sister protectively as she assessed the situation before finally coming to a conclusion. “Stay behind me.” She didn't want to rely on anyone but if there were any card or code access consoles that they couldn't get to, chances are this officer would have it.

Nora straightened her back and slowly came forward from the shadows, keeping her practiced expression of impassiveness on as she spoke, her eyes every so often flicking towards Laiden. “My sister and I are looking to get to the main Bridge, Officer. Can you help us?” True, Nora was curious what had happened to cause such a disaster and had other questions to ask this man but as far as she was concerned whatever had happened had happened and right now she wanted to find her brother and then she could learn what fate had befallen the ship and how to get out of this predicament.

Messer grabbed his wrist and jerked him around and put him in a simple arresting position. He had been in this exact position many times before. It was usually an enforcer of some sort on the other end. Sometimes, however, it was a girl named Jasmine who was fine with a smile and no last names. Though he couldn't focus on that at this moment, there was a large burly man with a dominating hold on him standing right behind him. "Oh, so you like it rough, eh Officer? I can dig it." Laiden said as sleazily as he could. He knew he was just making the man uncomfortable at the moment, and he was enjoying it. It's the little things that keep you going in a crisis. Messer then shoved him away. Laiden turned around and crossed his arms.

"You sound like you've already resigned yourself to death Mr. Jones. That's sad, but it might come in handy. You say its been 500 years since the launch; I don't know if I believe you or not. To honest Mr. Jones, I'm not sure if you are even in your right mind. I do know that there is someone in the bridge that opened all those locks, whether its this girl you say you saw or not. That means my next destination is the bridge, however as an Enforcer of the ESF, it is my duty to protect all registered colonists aboard the Arlington. So, if you want to come with me, I cannot refuse. I don't know you or your morals Mr. Jones, but so far your words have left me concerned for your safety. I sincerely hope you do not take any self-destructive actions, and if you do, please be considerate enough to let me continue fighting for my life."

Laiden closed his eyes and his eyebrows began to twitch. Who the hell did this guy think he was? He surely was assuming a shit load about him and throwing his assumptions in his face. Laiden thought he wasn't much of a people person, but this guy took the cake. Laiden usually made a point to not give three shits about what anybody said, but this guy was pushing his buttons. As if he would be as cowardly and weak to end his own life just because a painful death was certain. If he said one more goddamn condescending, superior sounding thing, he was going to shove his blade up his ass and out through his spine. He decided to not respond to him and just follow him over to the grav lift.

He swore he heard blaster fire in the distance and he stopped. Messer had heard it to, they both exchanged glances. It sounded again, coming from the main grav lift. They looked at it, then back at each other. Messer moved his gun into a defensive position and Laiden unhooked Right from it's holster. They slowly made their way to either side of the grav lift door. Laiden nodded at Messer and he hit the call button. Just as he did it, a voice sounded off to the side.“My sister and I are looking to get to the main Bridge, Officer. Can you help us?” Messer immediately flipped around and raised their guns toward the source of the voice. Messer spun around on one knee and raised his rifle to his shoulder.

When the two saw it was just two girls, they both lowered their weapons. Messer breathed a sigh of relief and raised his blast shield to address them. Laiden's blank expression had yet to change and remained completely neutral. "You should be more cautious when approaching armed men, ma'am. We are heading to the bridge as we speak, but their could be something dangerous in this lift. So please stand back." Laiden simply rolled his eyes. Was this guy a walking regulation book or what? Though before he went back to the lift, he did a bit of a double take at the girl in front of the shorter one. He looked her up and down, then looked back at the lift.

They were re-positioned on either side of the lift door, weapons at the ready. The numbers got closer and closer to their floor. Messer put his blast shield back down and gave his Luscious a good cock. The lift finally reached their floor. The lift dinged and the doors slid open. They both swung into the lift and aimed at the being inside. inside was a man in some odd armor in the feeble position. He looked freaked out. They then both noticed the ESF logo on his uniform. "False alarm. It's just some ESF guy." Laiden said in his neutral tone. He re-holstered his guns, then bent down in front of him adn stared at him. The dude didn't seem to know where he is. "Hey..." The guy didn't seem to hear him. Laiden then smacked him across the face. "Hey, who the fuck are you?"

"False alarm. It's just some ESF guy."

Messer stepped into the lift behind Jones. He instantly recognized the gear of an Engineer Corpsman, which adorned the body of a man in obvious distress.

"Hey..."

Albrecht felt his breath catch in his throat as he recognized the face of the man. Then, Jones smacked the man clean in the face.

"Hey, who the fuck are you?"

Messer grabbed Jones by the shoulder and pulled him away from the Engineer gruffly. He examined the Corpsman, and found that he was fully conscious and awake, but suffering from severe shock. Messer lifted the visor on his helmet and turned the man's head with his hand until he was making eye-contact with him.

"Engineer MacCreedy, this is ESF Enforcer Albrecht Messer." He stated firmly.

He was amazed that out of all the people who were dead, Charles was one of the survivors. Engineer MacCreedy was one of the few people Messer had bothered associating with aboard the Arlington since launch. They had been assigned to the same MSPG (Maintenance and Security Patrol Group), and had become just about as close to friends as two people who only spoke to each other every few months could. Right now though, it looked like Charles had been to Hell and back.

"I need you get a grip Charles. What happened to you?"

Messer glanced back at the two young women standing at the entrance to the lift. Things were developing much faster than he had expected. He had no idea who these two were, and whether or not they would be helpful or trouble. He did know one thing though, he would feel a lot better with the Corpsman by his side in this rapidly growing group.

Charles' eyes popped open when he heard a distinctly female voice yell out to the lift. He was about to stand when the lift stopped, and the doors slid open, revealing a lanky, white haired man with a bionic eye. He wasn't really put off by the eye, but he was put off when he was smacked across the face.

"Hey, what the f-"

At that moment he was grabbed by an ESF officer, Albrecht Messer, his squad leader. "Hey! Take it easy Mess! I'm fine! I was just resting. You would've known that if you guys had given me a chance to speak!" He held his hand to his face, nursing the welt that was already forming where the white haired man had smacked him.

"Anyways, you seem to have acrrued quite the entourage sir.", he stood up shakily, using the wall of the lift to brace himself, "Right, so what's the plan sir? I was headed up to the bridge. I figured if anyone is left on this tub, the bridge would be the best place to search from." He slung his weapons across his shoulders and brought his hand up to his collar, pressing the button to bring his helmet back over his head and across his face, [color=#BF0000]"So if you guys want to tag along hop on into the lift. If not, you're kinda blocking the doors." He meant it as a joke of course, but immediately after they left his mouth, he knew that his words had come off as much more disrespectful than he had even come close to intending.

"So if you guys want to tag along hop on into the lift. If not, you're kinda blocking the doors."

Messer couldn't help but smile at the remark, but he could tell something was seriously wrong with Charles. He wasn't the kind to suddenly take a nap inside of a grav-lift, especially after seeing what he must have seen upon awakening from cryo-sleep. Whatever it was though, it would have to wait until Messer could get this handful of ragtags to a secure location. Then again, how would he know what was secure and what wasn't?

"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 stood up and turned to face the three colonists. He summed them up quickly. Jones would be an asset as long as a sense of urgency or stress could be kept up within the group, but the moment things calmed down he could be trouble. He knew next to nothing about the two women. The older one appeared to have herself under-control and calm, he could tell she had some sort of training for being calm under serious circumstances. It wasn't military training though, perhaps medical? That would could be extremely helpful, he made a mental note to inquire about it to her directly. On the other hand, the younger female looked like she could have a meltdown at any moment. Her fingers and hands twitched violently, and she had a confused and scared look in her eyes.

He tried his best to give her a reassuring smile, she seemed to be the only person left alive aboard the Arlington with a completely normal reaction to whatever catastrophe had befallen the ship. The two females seemed related somehow, with similar bone structure and facial construction. They held themselves in a similar manner and stood close to each other as well, which meant they obviously knew each other.

"You two." He said, gesturing towards the two women. "You're welcome to accompany us. However, we have no way of knowing who or what has taken up residence in the Bridge. Normally, I would have recommended that you waited here with Mr. Jones while Engineer MacCreedy and I cleared the Bridge. However, normally the Bridge would not have to be cleared....

Messer stepped to the side of the lift and gestured towards the back wall of the cylindrical room.

"So, would you please back us up from the rear?" He requested.

As a show of good faith, he drew his compact service pistol and handed it grip first towards the woman with still hands.

"Just don't shoot me in the back."

Jayn had stayed close behind Nora as they approached the two men by the lift. Normally she would have argued, but the walk to the lift had left her with very few nerves that weren’t ready to just kick the nearest wall and tell everything in the ship coming back online to do so quietly.

“My sister and I are looking to get to the main Bridge, Officer. Can you help us?” Taking a glance from behind Nora, she couldn’t help but wonder if these two really could help them. It was a relief to find at least one security officer, but the two looked like they had just gotten finished with a not to buddy-buddy conversation. But before she could think much more about them, the two men had spun around and raised their weapons at the sisters. Automatically, Jayn reached for Nora and grabbed the back of her shirt in a death grip; feet shifting to drop low with her other hand on the handle of her knife. The chip locked her eyes onto the firearms, hearing enhancing for the slightest sound of the initial trigger click, eyes waiting for the slightest twitch of the hand; all ready to yank her sister down with her. Thankfully after realizing they were no threat, the strangers relaxed; allowing her to blink and come out of the tense position she had been subconsciously ordered to take. "You should be more cautious when approaching armed men, ma'am. We are heading to the bridge as we speak, but there could be something dangerous in this lift. So please stand back." Well, thank heavens these men aren’t trigger happy. Now if whatever’s in the lift was the same.

“Sorry.” She whispered to Nora, realizing just how tight she had yanked the back of her sister’s tank; “At least I didn’t tackle you.” Still whispering so the others wouldn’t over hear, Jayn shakily smoothed the wrinkles out of the back of Nora’s shirt while glancing at the other men. The officer seemed to be well armed and armored, as well as taking the situation calmly and effectively; though it was an entirely different calm compared to Nora. As for the white haired man, she couldn’t help but glance over him for more weapons; how did a civilian manage to get on here with a gun, then yet two! The best she could manage was her knife… Wait a second… did he just… did this guy just give her sister a once over!

Hand freezing in the process of straightening the shirt they soon found themselves relocated at her sides, twitching with the want to grab her knife. Instead Jayn settled for glaring at the man as he turned towards the lift, cocking his gun; the sound causing her to grab the blade’s handle. She would just have to worry about keeping him away from her sister later… or her sister away from him, come to think of it.

As the lift opened to reveal a single occupant, it was a relief to discover he was another ESF Enforcer to join their little gathering of survivors. “Hey sis, he doesn’t look too good, does he?” The newest stranger looked like he was coming back to alright, and said he was alright; but his face still looked as if he had a rather strained experience. Then again whose didn’t after waking up to this hell?

"You two. You're welcome to accompany us. However, we have no way of knowing who or what has taken up residence in the Bridge. Normally, I would have recommended that you waited here with Mr. Jones while Engineer MacCreedy and I cleared the Bridge. However, normally the Bridge would not have to be cleared....So, would you please back us up from the rear?" The first officer requested, before handing his pistol towards Nora. “Just don't shoot me in the back."

“Just don’t piss her off.” Jayn dead-panned with a complete seriousness. There was no doubt Nora had terrible bedside manners, but she also had no issues with landing a person in her own infirmary if pushed. “We have to go to the bridge regardless of anything. Our baby brother’s missing.” Voice still tightening at the thought of what had occurred in their parents’ cryo room, Jayn shook her head as if to shake the memory. There were people here who could help them, and this man was showing that he was willing to trust them as well. “Guess you should at least know who your backup is,” she said with a small smile, “I’m Jayn, and this is my sister Nora. She’s a medic.” No sense in saying what she was, unless they wanted her to play a lullaby and pray it put someone asleep, Nora’s was much more beneficial to them than she herself was; and these men needed to know who to go to for assistance.

Walking over towards the lift, the possible threat of the bridge allowed her chip to register the need for her to calm down; hands finally stilling as she nodded towards the other men shyly and stepped onto the lift and pulled out her knife from its place at her side. “Nora?” she left the question hanging, not really sure if she was asking her sister if she was ready, did she think it was a good idea to go, should they be trusting these men, or maybe all of the above. Either way only one thing stood out that bothered her about everyone in the group. How the hell did she end with only a knife with everyone else armed and ready?! Oh well, at least she was pretty confident in her chip keeping her as helpful as it could. Not to mention the terror of Nora with a trigger.

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.

"You should be more cautious when approaching armed men ma'am." The rest of the chivalrous sounding security officer's rambling was lost on her besides the part that they were indeed heading towards the bridge. She rolled her eyes in unity with the white haired civilian as the officer scooted her and her sister away from the lift. Honestly what other way did he expect her to approach him? Slide a message in a bottle to him across the floor to warn him before she made her appearance? Still, she obeyed and took a few steps back, even a couple more for Jayn's sake. The current death hold she had on her clothes hadn't gone unnoticed and Nora wanted to try and avoid having her younger sibling stress rip the only clothing she had available off of her body. "Sorry" Her sister whispered to her. "At least I didn't tackle you." Nora couldn't help the slight smirk that tugged at her mouth but quickly disappeared. "It's alright. Just remember to breathe deeply. I doubt you falling off the edge and shooting everything that moves will cause these men to want to help us."

The security officer and the civilian positioned themselves in front of the lift, ready for whatever might be inside. While Nora's calm disposition didn't change, she did place one arm out to partially block her sister from any danger that might leap from within. It quickly turned out to be a false alarm and the only thing that was inside was a deeply distressed man. His heart and blood pressure were elevated, a normal, but distressing response to what was currently happening. The white haired man took no time in grabbing the distressed man and slapping him across the face. While that wasn't the best approach, Nora found it entertaining and yet again she let a smirk flash over her face. "Hey sis, he doesn't look too good, does he?" She flicked her eyes back towards her sister for a moment, then back towards the group of men before answering. "No, he'll be fine though. I see no reason to expend my energy and resources to intervene simply because he can't get it together." The security officer then stepped forward, pulled the white haired man away and began speaking to the distressed gentleman with some form of familiarity; they must know each other. "Engineer MacCreedy, this is ESF Enforcer Albrecht Messer." Well, at least she knew two of the three men's names now.

Nora stayed back from the group with her sister, watching as Messer and MacCreedy traded a few more words before finally the officer addressed them. "You two." Nora raised a brow towards him to show she was listening. "You're welcome to accompany us. However, we have no way of knowing who or what has taken up residence in the Bridge. Normally, I would have recommended that you waited here with Mr. Jones while Engineer MacCreedy and I cleared the Bridge. However, normally the Bridge would not have to be cleared..." Jones. That was the white haired man's name. The officer then stepped forward and pressed a gun into Nora's hands. She looked down at it with no particular surprise; she'd shot before, she wasn't the best, but she knew enough. "Just don't shoot me in the back." Nora's eyes darted up to his at that comment, perhaps it was meant as a jest towards bad aim or perhaps it was meant as mistrust, either way she didn't appreciate it. "Just don't piss her off." Nora's eyes flicked back to her sister and she chuckled. "I won't shoot you in the back Officer Messer. That would only create more work for myself." Her sister made the introductions which Nora was grateful for; she wasn't fond of social interactions. In fact, Jayn took it farther than that and surprised her by walking away and stepping onto the lift. "Nora?" Nora sighed a heavy breath, noting that she could see it from the cold and once again silently cursed the fact that she had only worn a fucking sleeveless shirt into the pod. She adjusted the pack on her back, shifted the gun in her hands and stepped forward, taking a place in the back of the lift near Jayn and silently enjoying the body warmth. It was too close for comfort with men she didn't know, especially too close to her sister but if they arrived on the Bridge and found themselves to be apparently outnumbered by enemies or unable to access the computers....This was for Aiden and if worse came to worse then they would be fine because they weren't dependent on these men, you could never be dependent on others in times of crisis. Always rely on yourself first.

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.