[M] The Andromeda Federation (IC)

[Kaptain Panty]

It seemed the mechanic had brought along a spare exo-suit. Zyaust-jecant avoided asking the obvious questions and just let them get on with trying to fit the survivor into the suit. Which, after some doing, the pilot and mechanic seemed to manage. Thing even had an automated guidance system that was jetting the suit and its occupant back to the ship. Zyaust-jecant briefly wondered whether investing in drones of some sort would be worthwhile. Their hands retracted from the intercom panel, and they ambled over to the airlock door. A hand, made clumsy by their suits thick layers, crudely mashed the buttons of the doors interface panel. They lurched into the interlock. As the air rushed out, they wondered how it would have felt. The hatch to the void opened, and they used their six limbs to clamber out onto the outside of the ship. The hatch closed behind them as two hands grasped the railing of the left of the hatch, twisting their body to face the supposed co-ordinates of the incoming automated suit.

As they span, Zyaust-jecant noticed someone else had left the ship and was heading towards the wreckage. The readout said it was Ayo. Must of said nothing about going out through the comms, and they couldn't hear a damn thing with the suit on. Not that such a thing really mattered with it being a suit for a void sound had no way of transmitting through. They kept their body turning, and after a few moments of calibrating their position - damned space and its lack of deceleration - they had the drifting suit of the survivor in view. Now there was just more waiting. Unless the automated guidance system faced issues, of course.

"Uh, is anyone standing by an airlock for the survivor?" rang the voice of Sirc through their suits comm link.

'[ASSURANCE] I am already outside of the hatch and waiting to receive the survivor. [MILD DOUBT/WORRY] I have the survivor in sight, but it will still take some time for them to reach the ship. [ASSURANCE] I am standing by, ready to guide the survivor through the airlock and bring them to the ship by hand if necessary.'

Zyaust-jecant mused on the stars as the suit became slowly larger but still remain far away. Which one did the occupant of the suit come from? Was it one they could see right now, if they only knew which one? What were the possibility of picking the right one if they were to do so at random? Curious questions they knew they'd forget for better ones. But Zyaust-jecant thought it was good to ask lots of questions, even if they didn't seem important. Let you compare and use the scientific approach to find the important ones. Comparisons were probably useful for other approaches too.

Fortunately, the guidance system had no issue getting close to the ship. Still, Zyaust-jecant pulled the hatch lever.

'[MILD DOUBT/WORRY] Survivor approaching airlock. Moving in to personally guide them through.'

After opening the hatch, they leaned inside to engage the locking mechanism to keep the hatch open. Then they pushed off the side of the ship and over to the suit, intent on guiding it the last stretched. They would have just grabbed it with two spare hands, but they didn't know how to actually turn off the automated jets; so they kept close behind with arms ready to intervene. Nothing went amiss, and they were soon in the interlock. Zyaust-jecant disengaged the lock and let the hatch close behind them, but paused the re-pressurisation sequence.

They manoeuvred the survivor so they were draped across their back, their two back arms positioned to keep their body as level as possible, before starting the re-pressurisation. Did they have stretchers? Maybe they should, if not, unless they didn't have them since the corridors were too narrow to fit them or something. Whether they did or not have stretchers, they ferried the suited survivor to the med-bay (sick-bay?) by hand as best they could. Zyaust-jecant still having their suit on made things awkward, but they took they took each step with care. Moving with four limbs sure made scanning for obstacles with sight and crude motion and impact sensors a lot easier than if they'd only had two.

They entered the corridor leading to the...medical room, they'll call it for now, they could look up if it was a med-bay or sick-bay or if both terms were correct later, and noticed the doctor coming out of it. It struck them that they had forgotten to announce that the survivor had been successfully taken on board. Had they even turned their suits intercom on? Thoughts for later. They needn't and actively tried to avoid the pitfalls of their parents ideology.

'[MILD CONFIDENCE] Doctor, very good. Just tell me where you want the survivor placed. You'll have to take them out of the suit yourself, this suit makes my hands too clumsy. Speaking of, after I put the survivor down, I'm going to store the suit then come back when my hands are more able.'

[Enigma]

"Thank you, captain," The Draconian veterinarian sighed as he brought the survivor into the Sick Bay. "If you please, put them on the autodoc table, I will need to examine them."

The autodoc coffin-like lid stood open, ready to receive the patient. An older but certainly serviceable unit, but with an unknown species would need all the help it could get.

"After it seals, it will sterilize the immediate area inside, I can then use a port to get them out of the suit," Sirc explained. "This way we don't cut it."

[Highland Sniper]

Experiment 019 drifted in and out of consciousness soon after she went into the other ship as she was carried down the corridor to the med bay.

She was almost fully awake by the time she was at the med bay, the insolation of this suit must of really helped take the edge off of the cold. she tried to look around but didn't move much as she was carried by this thing.

Then she got to the medbay and she heard them talking. She still couldn't understand what they were saying still. This was good and bad news. They probably weren't the people from back home then, but she had no idea what they would do to her now. She just had to hope.

But when she noticed that she was about to be put into a small box-like contraption, she began to struggle. She let her thoughts broadcast, a mixture of fear and anxiety accompanied by the words "Not again, not confined." as she struggled weakly.

[Azazeal849]

The hiss of escaping pressure as they wrestled the door open made Pedro bite his lip behind his helmet. No air in the rest of the ship meant that their chance of finding anyone else alive was basically nil. The one they had picked up already had been freakishly lucky.

He beamed Ayo and Tink’s video feeds onto his HUD, the pictures forming small squares down the left side of his visor. Tink was twirling away aft, tracing what looked like a cable run back towards what was hopefully a generator of some kind. Ayo was zigzagging somewhere overhead, bouncing between the walls with economical springs of her legs. Pedro took a breath and began to crawl hand-over-hand towards what he hoped was the front of the vessel. His torch painted a lonely circle of light across the crawlspace, picking out loosely waving coolant tubes and spalled-off shards of metal plating.

It was in a globular module, not unlike the one the survivor had been holed up in, that he saw the first bodies.

There were two of them, drifting against the curved wall, stiff and swollen by vacuum. They were both humanoid; one with a pronounced, almost canine muzzle, and the other was slender and almost humanlike, with ashen grey skin. Both wore functional white jumpsuits, and both of them had black, carbonised holes burned through their torsos.

Pedro’s heart was pounding, a wet thudding sound that seemed to reverberate around inside his helmet. He coughed, swallowed.

“Uh, Falcor...I’ve got…ahem...I’ve got two dead crewmen in the forward section, possibly two different species? Somebody shot them.”

He took another shuddering breath. Nothing you can do for them. Keep moving. You need a cockpit - or if Tink can get the power working, a computer terminal.

Even as he swung his torch towards the door he found himself twisting round inside his helmet, trying to keep the two floating shadows in view. He could feel their glassy eyes on him as he edged onward, boring into his back.

[Enigma]

The survivor was struggling. Instinctively she moved to comfort it, when she was suddenly struck by the alien's mental message.

"My queen!" Sirc collapsed, kneeling on the floor with her palms and forehead pressing against the cold textured tile.

She held the pose for a long moment, then the Draconian raised her head in confusion, looking up at the captain.

"And yet, my queen is dead!" The veterinarian said, sitting up, cupping her hands to cover her face. She let them fall away, revealing her tears streaming down her scaly skin. "I do not understand this! My queen wants me not to treat this creature! She wants this creature to be released into the void! Why do the dead demand another death?"

[Cfavano]

Skylar stayed out of the way, he wasn't really good at salvaging, so he didn't want to be a bother. However, he was good at talking to people, so he stuck around while the survivor, for he had been listening to comms, was brought in. He couldn't really tell much about the creature, from the bulkiness of the suit, but followed anyway in his soft slippers as Sirc prepared to receive it.

It was then that Sirc started to break down. Instinctively, he went over to her to comfort her with a hug. "Hey, it's alright. Just breathe deeply, calm down. If you need help communicating with them I can help, I'm a telepath."

[Moonlit_Fae]

Ayo was relieved when Pedro and Tink went off in their own seperate directions. It would give her more time to work and not feel rushed. She hopped along easily against the cold, metal walls of this abandoned ship. Her strong leg mucles propelling her effortlessly with the lack of gravity. She barely felt the burn within her muscles. It was nice to set her own pace and not have to slow herself down when exploring with others.

Before long Ayo had found a room down a long corridor that appeared similiar to her workspace on the Falcor. It was a scientific lab with beakers and notebooks with scribbles in them. A computer screen was smashed and there also appeared to be broken glass about. Some blood smeared on the floor. A lifeless corpse staring back up at her. Its eyes rolled back into its head and its skin a ghastly pallor. Death had welcomed this humaoid for a long while now. The bullet hole told the story. Seeing the dead body did not frighten her. Instead she found a piece of cloth and draped it over the body. She then shrugged and moved about her business, doing her best to respect the dead.

Over the intercom she alerted the others. "I also have a dead body. Back here in the termial bay off to the left. Some sort of lab set up."

From log notes she concluded that this ship ran on a basic algae set up with bioilumenisence involved. She found some of the algae and began to put some into her terra pods to collect as samples. Ayo had also found a map on the wall which marked a green house of sorts. She would definitely go there next.

[Enigma]

"Tele-path?" Sirc frowned. How was he a long road? Then realization hit.

"Oh!" she smiled, amused, wiping away her tears. Sharing thoughts without speaking? What odd fantasies these others believed in.

"It was a scent memory. I did not mean to worry you," Sirc apologized, turning towards the sani-station to clean her hands. "The specimen needs to calm so we can help it. Perhaps you can stroke it through the suit, reassure it. Until I can be sure it has the right immunities and air mixture, we cannot expose it to our air."

[Highland Sniper]

019 continued to struggle silently as broadcasted again "Don't put me in the box! not the box!" though she doubted anyone understands anything but the emotions of anxiety that accompany the words. She was little in the eyes of the thing holding her hast as she struggled, not just with its solid grip, but with the suit she was in, its unfitting folds hindering her movements.

The only sound she made was the huffing and puffing of her struggle. She still had little idea of what was going on other than she has been rescued and had no idea of their intentions. But she didn't want to be put into the box. All those test chambers and ducts had taken their toll. She has had enough of small spaces

[Cfavano]

Skylar's head pops up. "It doesn't want to be in the box. It is scared, very scared." He goes over to 019 and looks her in the eye through the suit. He gently places his hand on the chest of the suit, and she can feel his pressure through it. She can feel, at the back of her mind, gentles waves of calm pressure. She can feel him attempting to form a mental link with her, to share thoughts. Calm down, little one, his gentle voice would communicate. No one is going to hurt you, we only want to help. We are friends. My name is Skylar, I'm a musician. What is yours?