1 Excitatio

I groggily woke up, seeing mist and frost covering the inside of my cryo chamber. I was freezing cold, despite being in my powered armour suit, and absolutely hated this. I am amazed by cryo technology and how it works, but ooooh cryo sickness sucks. I shoved the pod opening, falling out, and clambering up before noticing my suit had held back notifications. I took a deep breath, shook my head, and let them through. There was a lot of them, but the two I noticed were one, 'All systems down' and two, 'Unidentified lifeform detected on board' (AN: It's been a while since I've played, so idk how accurate these are, don't mind me...). I just sighed, thinking it's some error that came with using an experimental warp gate never before tested, before going around the room. Everyone had been woken up, I was just the first to get out. I noticed Wright and Smith in pods near me, and went to help them up and out.

Smith muttered a thanks to me, but Wright just said "Bug off and let me wake up..." I just let him lean on a wall and hold back barf. Everyone is affected by cryo sickness, but some are affected more than others. I walked over to the captain who still, despite sitting on the edge of his pod and trying to wake up, looked like a leader. He trained himself that way. I asked him "What's up with the weird notifications I got from the CORE? Do we need to repair something?" he just said "I don't know, and it's just saying 'The alien must be terminated. Awakening agent shortly.', whatever that means. I know everything recorded about the CORE and I've never heard anything like that."

I thought for a moment before saying "I think we should just continue our operations, repair the ship, and finish our mission." he just responded by saying "Agreed. I'll rally the others, especially the two miners and the engineer, and we'll repair damage, reset the software, and continue on." I nodded, and went over to Wright and Smith. They were recovering well, although Wright was still a bit woozy from what I could tell. Smith said "What's up dude? Which level are you gonna go to? Gotta reset everything after all, and you can reset everything completely." I said "Might head to three, work in the biosphere or psionics. After that I think I'll head to five to help Sgt. Lee with the weapons systems." he said "Ok, that's actually smart. Helps to throw your weight in the right direction. Yeah."

I said "You have no idea what I'm going to be doing, do you." he just said "Nope. It's your job to know though." I just laughed, said "Get up, that is an order marine!" to Wright, who chuckled in response, before walking out and going to the elevator to level three. When I got out of the elevator, I immediately noticed that the animals were getting out of the 'zoo'. I shooed as many as I could back in, before asking the Doctor through the comms if he wanted the remaining free ones terminated or ignored. He said to ignore them. I shrugged, and went over to the psionics lab, while doc went to check on the genetics research station. I waited for a bit before researching the psionics, which allowed me to get a upgrade for my suit's energy reserves.

I then went over to the other research station when the doc called for me. I went over and said "What's wrong?" he said "I don't know. Look, we have pens for genetic research samples, but where are the animals that were in them? We had animals from the zoo in them, but the pens are open now." I said "I don't know. Last I saw, there weren't animals running about freely. My work here is done, so I'm going to level five." I then went to level five, waving to a miner heading from five or six and going to one on my way, and heading straight to Sgt. Lee's room. He spun on me, saw who I was, and spun back around to his workstation in one smooth motion, before saying "Come in LT, I need a bit of help with this."

I stepped forward, seeing the problem quickly. I said "Lee, did you try and mess with the wires to manually reset everything completely?" he just said "Yeah... I have no idea what I'm doing though." I just sighed, motioned for him to step aside, and starting putting the console back together. When it was finished, I said "Done, let me get the first level, and next time if you want to try something like this, call me or the Engineer, although that guy is a recluse and is practically married to the reactor, so he might not come." Lee just said "Ok, sure, sure, I'll call you next time..." I went and wandered over to six, just sitting down on a crate and watching the major work with his machines. He put something into the mech factory, I got a 'Alpha codes reset' notification, he fueled an Olympus mech, got in, and wooped into the comms as he stomped around before coming to a stop near me. He leaned out the control area, saying "Neat huh!" and then got in, shut it, and left.

I went, 'bought' a few fuel cells from the nearby 'general store' (AN: the CORE rewards them with 'credits' for working, increases their income when they do useful things, and they can 'buy' various pieces of equipment if they have the right amount of credits. Upgrades to reset the ship also use them.) before putting them into a reset Hades mech, pulling myself inside once it was ready, stomping away, more prepared than before. The mechs were a passion of the major's, and they are essentially fancy exo skeletons with armour, advanced technology, and guns. They look awesome, but I don't see why an exploration vessel needs military mechs. At least we have Apollo mechs, which are fast and can act as exploration vehicles.

I wandered around, went back to five, got to level two for the weapons, which was odd because Lee definitely could have at this point, but it means more income for me so... eh. I then turned my motion tracker on, noticing I was the only person on level five. Wonder where Lee went. I stared at a monitor showing a view of space, noticing a nice looking desert planet. Wonder what's on it. Wright suddenly ran in, yelled "Come on!" through his helmet speaker, and ran out. I ran after him, calling through the comms, and noticing only static was coming through. I then noticed a damaged notification stating an ion storm had hit.

I followed Wright all the way to level one, where he showed me a corpse. I had seen bodies before, but this one was different. It looked like it had been torn apart by an animal, and there was a circle of strange purple goo around it. I couldn't tell who it was. I asked Wright "Did you see what happened?" he said "No, I just heard an explosion in here. A thermite I think." I sat there, thinking, before saying "What about the security cameras?" he said "This place and six are both blind spots for the cams. There are cams here, but the rooms are too closed and cluttered to give a good view right now." I then motioned for him to come, picked up the corpse, brought it to the recycler, and had it jettisoned. Disturbingly enough, the CORE rewarded me with an income boost. I grabbed a spare cleaning kit laying there, and cleaned up the goo. I had made sure to take a picture first though.

Me and Wright both went to the security office, me upgrading the security systems after turning them on, and him looking at the cameras and initiating a station wide lockdown. The storm passed after a few minutes, and we were hit with complaints of the locked doors. I yelled a few times, before going onto a private channel with the captain. He said "Why did you lock the doors? I would have unlocked them, but I figured you had a reason." I said "There has been a death." he then yelled out loudly for everyone to be quiet on the intercom. I then told Wright to tell them. He told about the body, the goo around it, and all of that. Everyone was quiet. Someone then said "Captain, can't you scan for all of us? See who died?" the captain did. There were twelve people.

Everyone was really quiet, before Smith said "If someone died, then why are there still twelve of us?"