Futuristic Transsolar

[Dragongal]

Adira looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "No angle, just saying my opinion. I'm a very opinionated person. That's why I get into fights so much." Adira always presented things at face value. She couldn't be put through anything worse than what she'd been through already. Woods definitely needed to learn how to trust.

 

[BookWyrm]

Vince sat back in his chair, his neck twitching some as he reached around to scratch it. Just leave me alone dammit. "I...I didn't mean to snap at you.", he sighed. "I hate saying this, but I'm just not used to people treating me like I'm human, like they could trust me. The last time I trusted people.." Vince glanced down at his right hand as he rolled it around on his wrist. "I almost died that day. I had a punctured lung, a missing arm, and some other unsavory things. They didn't believe it when I came out alive. We'd been fighting the Xyvir, and well, I never want to have to fight one by myself again."

 

[Dragongal]

"Don't worry about snapping at me. Anyway, not all people would toss you to a Xyvir." Adira leaned back a bit, finally starting to relax after her medical scanning. "Look, you've got a whole crew to fight by your side now. I'll be throwing people into the void if they try to leave you alone in a fight, or leave anyone alone with a Xyvir."

 

[BookWyrm]

Vince chuckled. "That's good. I'd hate to lose another arm just to cripple one of those things again." He hadn't been able to kill the Xyvir. If he had been in better condition before the fight, probably. But he'd already been through a metaphorical meat grinder before facing off with that thing.

 

[Dragongal]

"Yeah, from what I've heard, those bastards are determined. I've never fought one, my specialty has always been killing humans and exploring." Pirate attacks, bandits, uppity colonists that decided they'd test a fight on an exploration craft before going against a fleet. Tactically she was good. One-on-one, she was pretty damn good. Fighting a Xyvir? Not something she wanted to do.

 

[BookWyrm]

"Determined? Well, yeah, if that's what you want to call it." Whether he noticed or not Vince was calming down. He'd laid back in his chair, his shoulders relaxed, and his overall manner in better shape. "Their definitely tricky bastards to fight. God willing we won't run into any of them."

 

[Dragongal]

"That is the plan. Instead we just get to battle new species we know nothing about..." Adira sighed heavily. She was tired, and she knew it. "I'm not going to be much use if I don't sleep, but.... I', just too damn scared to let my body relax enough. I don't want to deal with the nightmares, even if there's only a chance... I'd been fine for months, but then... the night I crashed at your place, the nightmares started again. Probably from the fact that I got kicked in the head."

 

[BookWyrm]

Vince nodded, understanding more than he wanted to talk about. "Sometimes you just gotta take a risk. I hate it, especially when you know they are just waiting for you to fall asleep, but there is no way around it either." Vince looked at the floor for a minute of two. "Do you want me to stay until you fall asleep?" Why the hell did I just ask that?

 

[Dragongal]

Adira looked at him for a few moments before shaking her head. "This is your time off. You deserve to go and do something you want to do with your time. I'm not going to take that away from you." What could he do anyway? It might be easier to fall asleep, but one she was asleep nothing was going to stop the nightmares if they were going to come. There was still a chance that they wouldn't, but she didn't like it anyway.

 

[BookWyrm]

"Alright." Vince stood back up and walked towards the door before stopping to look back at Adira. "If you need anything just....send me a message." As he walked out Vince finally reached back and scratched the back of his head with a sigh. When he was back in the safety of his room he pulled out the bottle of sedatives and placed them with the others he had collected. There had to be at least twenty bottles hidden away in a cabinet. Whenever one stopped working he'd rotate it out for another one. This time he took some from the bottle intended for Adira before laying back on his bed. "Shit."

 

[Dragongal]

Adira laid back on her bed, pulling up the covers. It took only seconds for her to fall asleep in her exhausted state. It didn't take long for a nightmare to take hold.


Adira opened her eyes to a small room with steel paneled walls. They reminded her of old pictures of the metal ships on the water, riveted and rusty on the edges. The room was nearly pitch-black, the only light coming in through the grated window of the door. She was laying on a blanket on the hard steel floor. There was only one door to the room, thick steel with a small grated window, and locked. Adira’s heart rate tripled as she looked around. Not again. God, no, please, no, no, no -





Adira sat up with a scream, panting heavily as she shook and tears coursed down her face. It took her a few moments to realize where she was, and that she was safe. After a number of minutes, she leaned back, but she knew she couldn't go to sleep. At least she'd gotten a few hours in....

 

[InsanEleven]

Saami sat on the bridge, his chair on a plateau above the others of the navigation department. It was standard that the head pilot could manage the whole crew from his chair on the six screens in front of him, but as Saami could check on the data passing by in his head he didn't need every screen. Instead he coded the definite calculations in using two touchscreens. At exactly 8 in the evening Earth time, the lights on the ship started dimming.


"Thank you for your work today, your tasks are done for the day and you are free to go. I expect you back on the bridge at 8 am tomorrow." The crew was off for the day, their duties done. They were all human, and without enough sleep and breaks they would certainly fail from the pressure of continuously doing mathematics. The crew was divided in a morning shift of two, an afternoon shift of three and after dinner they came together in full to check all calculations and implement them.


There was no reason for him to take off though, so he continued calculating and programming until deep in the night. At least until about 3 am, when he was sure the whole ship was asleep, and he got peckish. Quiet but quite determined he made his way over to the mesh hall and the kitchens, and as the whole ship generally was asleep at this time there of course wasn't any food waiting for him there. But that didn't mean he couldn't use the kitchens to prepare himself something using the produce laying around.


The kitchens were air tight, both to make sure no annoying smells made their way out, and in the off case that fire did happen it would be contained immediately. Knowing that he swiftly prepared himself some nice sweet and sour chicken with baked rice. It wasn't impossible that an INANES could cook, of course they could follow recipes, but they generally didn't do so unasked in the middle of the night. They generally weren't very good at it either, hard to cook with no heart and literally following recipes to the letter never gave good results. But it was something he liked and one thing he was good in not because he was ridiculously precise; he played music like a metronome and chess like a computer. Cooking he could slip in a little bit of heart and feeling without immediately having to explain himself, though that could also be simply because he never got the chance. No military base letting him into the kitchens, but here he had some more freedom.


What were they going to do anyway? He was the head pilot and they still had six months to go, if they were lucky. The chance of dying was a real one whether he was found out or not, and if he had a choice he'd rather die at least eating decent food and not some mesh hall mashed potatoes and dried nutrient packets.

 

[Anaxial]

Marshall's stoic face gazed out across the weathered faces of the Kings and Queens, various members of their court, lined in succession of their respective power. His eyes lazily lifted from the faces of the mysterious monarchs and stared coldly at three others sitting around an overturned supply crate.


Marshall was as before; shirtless but at least he had showered and washed away the ragged stench of Arid Harbor moonshine and replaced it with the choking scent of cigar smoke, the cigar hung lazily from his lips, half it's life burned away while Marshall's hands calmly caressed the faces of the monarchy in his hands. The others around the crate stared at Marshall, just as coldly as he stared at them, and one by one they lowered their hands to the table, revealing their cards.


Marshall finally grew a smile and gripped the cigar butt with his teeth.


"Royal flush." He said showing the others the cards in his hands. A uproar of frustrated groans and angry looks were shot at Marshall as he placed a hand on the pile of money, that had been gathering in the center of the crate. Not long after he had pulled his winnings towards him, Marshall eyeball ed his watch and pulled the cigar from his mouth, shooting a finger at the two directly across from him.


"You two, I want you to head to the armory after dinner and count mags and rounds. I swear to god if you lose another bullet I'll kill you with it when I find it." He said, all three of them stood up and began to collect their personals before begrudgingly leaving Marshall to his winnings.


As much animosity that existed between Marshall and the two 'leaders' he had to give credit were credit was due; Adira ran a crew similar to how Marshall ran his, back in his pirating days. Though he doubted they'd be raiding Outliner settlements, or settlements at all if they existed out here, Empire or no. The Mercenary put his hands behind his head and kicked his feet up, prying off his boots and relaxing as he counted up his winnings.


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Anu had been unusually restless after their stasis, his boost wasn't equipped to even sleep and being forced to lay their awake, staring at the ceiling with nothing to analyze, nothing to look over, it was torture. Since his release, he'd spent his entire time in his workspace, reading over technical manuals, published medical reports, and whatever he could scrounge up about the INANES and human advancement in synthetic life.


Though he had learned from Rae, and he controlled his urges to poke and prod at the humans, he still stared uncomfortably long and still obsessed over their hair, but he no longer destroyed rooms when he entered them. He paced about the room of his workspace in complete darkness, nervously tapping his second thumbs together, lost in thought. His whole life, 300 years were spent inside a small room, studying anything that was given to him. The N'thagn didn't socialize like these humans and though it was a welcome experience, Anu was smart enough to realize he was the odd ball out.


He'd have to get better at it, simple as that. Practice made perfect and Anu was a long way away from his N'thagn kin.

 

[Luminescent]

Rea awoke from her slumber with a dizzied and confused look plastered onto her face. Waking up from stasis was like falling asleep in your bed and waking up somewhere else. It was disorienting. It didn't help that she was trapped in a metal prison floating through an empty void. She smiled at Adira's message over the intercom. She was excited. This journey was going to be long and treacherous, and some might have called her a hero for it, but she just saw it as another opportunity coming her way. She didn't feel like a hero.


She wandered the ship aimlessly for several hours, greeting the occasional person, or gasping at the features in the ship, until roughly 8pm, when she decided to go get her first monthly check up from the doc. She knocked twice on the doc's door before entering. "Hi, I'm Rea Attune. Do I need a check up or something?"

 

[InsanEleven]

Doc was in the backroom of her office ordering the different drugs and medicines, when she heard the knock. Quickly she walked to the front and saw Rea, looking a whole lot more innocent than what she had had over the floor the rest of the day.


"Yes Dear, it's mandatory every month. Just sit down on the bed for me and I'll give you a quick scan." Doc gestured towards the bed, and went to get her scanner from her desk. After a few moments she had the results, which were all fine. "You're in fine health, try to keep it up and don't catch any diseases from the Defense department please."

 

[Dragongal]

Three a.m. What a time to be pacing the ship. It had been a hard night. On a whim, Adira went to the kitchens. Water didn't sound bad. It would give her something to do, to keep her mind occupied from the nightmares that were nagging at her mind. If she let them, they would drag her mind away from the present, into a painful, bloody flashback. However, she was very surprised to find Saami there. "You're up early."

 

[InsanEleven]

Saami had heard footsteps coming towards the kitchens, and it had gotten him very worried, yet he knew that running would only be more suspicious than anything. He was very relieved to find it was the Captain for a drink and not someone of the defense department deciding they had need for a midnight snack.


"Actually I don't sleep often, only about once a week. Calculating all day is quite trite, and I got hungry. Would you perhaps care for some Miss Adira?" Maybe he could bribe her with asian food, it was worth a try.

 

[Dragongal]

Adira shook her head with a smile. "No, thank you, I don't think I could stomach more than water, in honesty." That was the truth, her stomach was still in knots. She'd had to take too long to figure out that she was safe.

 

[InsanEleven]

Now he looked at her Saami definitely could tell something was off about her, and time spend in a military barack had thought him a lot about bad nights even if he didn't often experience them himself. "You do look worse for wear, am I right to assume it was a bad dream?" While asking that he plated his dish, putting it aside to rest as he cleaned his pans and pots. "Just know that if you ever want to sleep in late because of it, I have the ship under control."

 

[Dragongal]

Adira sighed. "That's very kind of you. I'll probably have Woods take the day if that happens, see how he does. But thanks. Let's be honest though, sleep and I aren't the best of friends."

 

[InsanEleven]

Saami smiled just a little bit and put his pots and pans away again, making it so that when he turned around and faced her there was no more trace of it left. "I am sure Mr Woods will treat me lovely, I think he likes me. In all seriousness though, if you feel too tired to do something don't force it upon yourself. I've seen quite some soldiers get hurt because they attempted to tough it out when they shouldn't have." It was quite unwise to do so even in a safe part of the galaxy, yet alone this wild uncharted territory. There was a reason he didn't try to think of his plate of food as a last meal.

 

[Dragongal]

Adira shrugged. "I know. I know my limits, and I'd never endanger the crew. If it ever gets bad enough, I'll work something out. Thank you for your concern, though."

 

[InsanEleven]

Saami took his plate to the table in the corner of the kitchen and sat down, facing the captain.


"It's nothing, really. Probably would be best if you decided this was nothing. After all, what robot makes sweet and sour chicken at 3am while expressing human emotions. You must be quite the dreamer Miss Adira." He raised a finger to his lips and gave her an innocent smile before starting on his food.

 

[Dragongal]

Adira chuckled as she got some waterand sat across from Saami. "Of course. A captain has to be imaginative. You asked me not to let anyone know. I have respected that,and will continue to do so."

 

[InsanEleven]

Saami nodded, he had noticed that, and was grateful for that.


"With types like Marshall around, and maybe even Woods, I don't think it would end well. You don't know what they do to INANES when they're faulty... please don't do that to me." His voice got slightly shivery when he thought about it, a process containing no respect or even warmth. To them he was just a heap of expensive flesh with parts they'd rather reuse.