We collected quite a few more people for this trip, while dropping off a couple from old party; Bryx and Willa stayed back, wanting to get their gear all set up, and then Brunt and Reim stayed behind too—Reim more than eager to get away from me and my inquisition apparently. I still had more questions for the nutritionist doctor, though I wasn’t sure how much help she would be at this point.

Me and Zyno went along with Gadow and Fierra, plus Lummy stuck around with us since she was some kind of engineer, although her focus was more on life support systems. We also had Zemman, the muscular grendall man, Unno, the blonde male kebophyn, and then Num, the male imphonite, all of whom were engineers or technicians with some mechanical knowledge, but unfortunately the warp reactor specialist and his assistant were long since dead.

Gamma-20 probably did that on purpose, along with killing the doctor before he could run his tests, plus the communications expert and navigator—basically anyone in a key position to help the crew while they were stranded in deep space; it simply seemed too specific to be random.

Then of course you had to wonder why Gamma-20 wanted to keep them all stranded, what the hell was she doing with those crystals?

“Has anyone checked on the khrona crystals in storage?” I asked the group.

“You mean since all the trouble started?” Gadow inquired.

“Yeah.”

Gadow shook his head, “When we declared the mission was completed and started for the return trip home, the storage tanks holding all the crystals were vaulted shut and shielded, preventing anyone from gaining access.” He explained.

“Standard protocol when transporting khrona crystals back into Imperial space, they won’t be released until we can get them to the company refinery.” Fierra added.

“And no one’s felt the need to double-check the vaults were still secure?” Zyno asked.

I could see the Jessipie-90 crew was amused by the suggestion.

“It would be impossible for anyone to get into the vaults, no point in checking them out now.” Zemman said.

I crossed my arms while we walked, “You all said there were some downed electrical systems, surely it’s possible the shielding failed?” I reasoned.

Num shook his head, “Not with the redundancies we have in place—I would know, that’s my specialty.” He insisted.

“Fact is there are more redundancies protecting the crystals than there are for life support; we could all die stranded out here, and the automated systems of the ship would still be protecting the crystals, ready to be picked up by a recovery vessel.” Zemman added.

Profit over lives, great way for the company to treat its employees—should fit right in with the rest of the Empire.

Obviously, I wanted to protest, but now wasn’t the time.

“So just to confirm, no one’s checked on the crystals in storage?” I pressed.

Gadow sighed, “No, Adam, we haven’t. But I don’t think you understand how big Jessipie-90 is and how many storage tanks there are; it would take days to go through every security log looking for anomalies, and cycles to actually check all the tanks visually. That would be a job for our computer systems or automated workforce, and since the computer says everything is clear and our robots have all been destroyed, we’re just going to have to leave it at that.” He confirmed.

That split my ideas down a couple more roads then; first, that could mean Gamma-20 was hiding out in the storage tanks somehow, and the crew would have no idea, leaving her free to nest or absorb and consume or whatever the fuck she was doing to the crystals. That, or she couldn’t gain access to the crystals yet, and that’s why she was keeping the crew alive, hoping they would somehow lead to her accessing the storage tanks.

Shit, but couldn’t she just assimilate them and gain all their knowledge on what she could do with the tanks? Then we were back to the problem of who might be assimilated on Jessipie-90’s

crew.

None of this made any sense, and despite spending all that time with Eve fighting other Predazoans, I still wasn’t anywhere close to understanding them or figuring out Gamma-20’s plan.

We traveled down another lift into the subbasement of Jessipite-90, and while everything up topside around the living quarters was all made to be bright and livable, down here was a completely different story.

In the subbasement everything was black, with dim lighting strips framing the ceiling. There was no need to dress things up, so the metal plating on the walls was abandoned, leaving us in a long hallway of dank pipes, tubes, and circuitry. It looked like some huge factory boiler room, futuristic and sophisticated, but still dark and dreary.

There was moisture everywhere, steam hissing out through relief valves every few minutes, with a constant, deep humming in the background.

“Welcome to the maintenance floor, watch your step.” Gadow said flatly as he led our group forward.

“Is the communication control system on this floor too?” I asked.

Fierra shook her head, “No, computer systems are up in the basement, structural systems are down here in the subbasement.”

“Anyone die or go missing down here?” Zyno asked, trying to sound sarcastic, but still obviously nervous.

No one answered his question.

Gadow led our group down a series of dark hallways, any of which would’ve been perfect scenery for a horror movie. The bulkhead doors leading into those random maintenance systems were always massive and sturdy, looked like they could honestly keep even a Predazoan out. Made me wonder if the storage tanks were even stronger, maybe Gamma-20 actually was having a difficult time accessing the crystals.

Eventually he took us to a huge open dome room that housed a massive warp reactor, at least five times larger than the one I saw back on Krook Hook. The overall structure looked the same; a large chrome sphere with a coiled cylinder for a core, with hundreds of black bulbs evenly spaced around the sphere.

“There it is, state-of-the-art warp reactor, supposed to create stable, long-lasting warp gates that would be large enough for the freighter, obviously that wasn’t the case.” Gadow said, sounding quite bitter.

Zyno’s face scrunched up in a thoughtful frown as he broke off from our crew and started inspecting the reactor.

“Did the reactor techs have a chance to work on it before they…disappeared?” He asked delicately.

Zemman walked forward to stand beside Zyno, “Hummokk and his assistant Xiolann spent days down here working on it, didn’t even leave during the first few disappearances. Eventually we forced them to come back up when tensions between the rest of the crew started building. Once they were all cleared they returned to the work, and some days later Xionlann came back alone saying he couldn’t find Hummokk anywhere, and then a day or so later he went missing too.” Zemman explained.

“That’s when we started implementing the partner system, making sure no one went anywhere alone from that point.” Fierra added.

Zyno walked around the reactor, trailing his hand along the side of the smooth sphere, “Did they leave any notes or logs behind, any progress report of what they’d been doing down here?” He asked.

Zemman shook his head, “If they did, it disappeared with them, that’s why no one’s really been able to pick up where they left off; we have no idea where they left off, and since none of us are specialists, we don’t really know where to start either.”

Zyno leaned down and pulled away a panel on the sphere, revealing some circuitry that looked like a mess of looping, glowing wires. Looked like nonsense spaghetti to me.

Zyno sighed and shook his head, “Unfortunaley, this is all beyond me.” He turned back to the other engineers, “I could maybe figure it out with time, but I’d basically need to take it all apart, see its inner-workings and mechanisms, then try and put it back together.”

Zemman and Num exchanged a look, then turned back to Zyno.

“Yeah, that’s basically what I said.” Num confirmed.

Lummy crossed her arms as she looked over the massive reactor, “Problem is that would probably take us all a few cycles working around the clock together, and there’s no guarantee once we took it apart we’d be able to put it back together in any workable state.”

“Worst case scenario, we could end up breaking it beyond repair.” Zemman said.

“Shit…” Zyno muttered, then looked over to Gadow, “How many more engineers do you have left on your crew?”

“Three more, but they’re assisting with communications now.” He answered.

Zyno continued walking around the reactor, as though hoping some inspiration would strike him if he studied the sphere enough.

“I think we need to start focusing our efforts, can’t be splitting our crews up like this anymore.” I reasoned.

“You mean have all our engineers work on fixing the warp reactor, or have them focus on communications?” Gadow asked.

I nodded, “Yeah, one or the other.”

Gadow looked at Fierra, but I could see she didn’t have the answers he was hoping to find; the final decision would be left up to the captain.

“Why don’t we head back up for now, regroup and have a meal, then we can all decide as one how we should focus our attention.” Gadow reasoned.

“Plus, if the people working on the comms systems have some good news, maybe that will make the decision easier.” Fierra offered.

“I could definitely do with a meal, might need to call it a night pretty soon too.” I admitted.

“Shit, yeah you guys have really been through it today, no reason to push yourself too hard after your void exposure.” Lummy said, looking quite concerned on our behalf.

Gadow pulled out his communicator, “I’ll send a message to the rest of the crew, tell them to meet us in the cafeteria so we can all take a break together.” He closed his comms and flashed me a small smile, “We’ll relax, recharge, have a little fellowship, then decide how we want to proceed with this mess.”

***

The cafeteria on Jessipie-90 almost reminded me more of the vacation stations in the Holistia Nebula rather than what we had on The Radiance. There were a few dining areas aboard The Radiance, and while they were state of the art and comfortable, they still looked like regular cafeterias. Here on Jessipie-90, it looked like we were at some fancy, buffet style restaurant; the walls were white metal paneling, but there were windows that had digital displays showing hyper-realistic scenery of paradise planets all over, made it look like we were actually on one of those planets. The booths were large and comfortable, plenty of space and seating to fit double the crew they had. Then up at the front there was a line of half a dozen food synthesizers, different makes and models that surely would give the crew an overabundance of options.

The rest of the crew had beaten us to the meal, and I saw our team members mingling in with everyone else. It looked like everyone had a full, unique plate of that synthesized food, and I was more than happy for it since I’d been so used to eating those plain protein rations.

We made our way over to the food synthesizers, and I wasn’t surprised to see they didn’t have any options for humans, but plenty safe for mammalian races. I ended up getting a juicy steak of some green meat, with a side of purple potato-like vegetables.

We all ended up sitting close together, our booths right next to each other, with Zyno and Zemman sitting on either side of me. The meal looked delicious, but when I bit into the steak, it honestly tasted more like plastic than meat; I’d learned of the strange, artificial aftertaste of synthesized meals, but this was more than just a little aftertaste, close to unpleasant even.

At least it was better than those survivalist protein bars.

Lummy across from me gave me an apologetic smile, “Tastes strange, doesn’t it?”

I shrugged, “Not the worst meal I’ve ever had, but it does taste rather…” I trailed off as I searched for the right word.

“Plasticky?” Zemman finished for me.

Zyno nodded into his strange red salad, “That’s about right.”

“The synthesizers were one of the systems that went down after the warp gate collapsed.” Gadow explained, looking like he was chewing a particularly rubbery piece of dark meat, “We got them back online pretty quickly, but we still haven’t been able to fix the taste.”

Fierra shrugged, “At least the nutrients are still all there, Reim confirmed that for us.”

It might not have been the synthesized gourmet meal I was hoping for, but at least it was safe and healthy.

It looked like everyone was chewing plastic mixed with rubber, so conversation was minimal while we all fought through the meal, but once plates started getting cleared, Gadow left to grab one of those hover chairs so he could sit in the middle of the booths.

“So, how are things looking for the communications system?” He asked without preamble.

Roote shook his head, “Seems like messages are all getting scrambled, can’t get word out of this system.” He confirmed.

“We’d have to reboot and rewire the computers to get them working again I would imagine.” Durgo added.

I wondered if that meant the probe was still blocking all our communications and we didn’t know how to get around that, or if Jessipie-90’s comms really were damaged now. Either way, it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to get word to The Radiance anytime soon.

Gadow looked to his crew by Durgo and Roote, “Would you be able to do that?”

He asked the general assembly, but it was Yevok, the dark blue glizreks male who answered, “Dunno boss, I’ve never rebuilt a computer for an intergalactic communications system.” He said, almost sounding harsh.

Gadow held his hands up to concede the point, “Fair enough.” He looked over the rest of his crew, “It seems we’re at a crossroads now; since we don’t have any specialists left who could repair or rebuild the warp reactor or the communications system, we need to decide which system we should focus on. I know for you engineers to be able to understand the system, you’d need to take it apart and then rebuild it to see how it works. Since we don’t have the security to wait around for both projects to be finished with some unknown threat aboard Jessipie-90, we need to decide which system the engineers will start working on.”

Fierra walked over to stand behind Gadow in his hover chair, “Everyone who thinks we should focus on comms, raise your hand.”

Only a few people raised their hands, with everyone looking around awkwardly.

“And who thinks we should work on the warp reactor?” She asked.

Again, only a few people were willing to commit to the vote—hell, I had no idea what it would take to fix the systems, so I didn’t vote either.

Gadow sighed, “Everyone who thinks we should split our attention on both projects, raise your hands.”

Only a couple people raised their hands then, most people just didn’t vote at all.

Gadow shook his head and scratched at the scaly ridge above his eye that seemed to be the equivalent of an eyebrow, “Does anyone have any suggestions on what we should do next?”

This time no one raised their hand, but everyone looked around, hoping someone would have an idea on what we were supposed to do to get out of this mess.

I sighed and raised my hand.

“Yes, Adam?” Gadow said, almost sounding hopeful.

“Honestly? My team is beyond beat; we were just in void space only a few hours ago completely unprotected.” I pointed to my temple, “I’ve still got this…psychic migraine that I’m worried might be permanent. My vote is we take the night to relax and think over what we should do moving forward starting tomorrow.”

I was pleased to hear quite a few people were muttering their agreement around me—and my team all admitted they were also nursing similar migraines.

Gadow looked around the room, then turned back to me, “We’ve all been through a lot, and I can’t even imagine what it was like being in the void without proper shielding.” He nodded, “Alright, I say we take the rest of the day to relax and get everyone settled in their new quarters.” A few people cheered quietly, but Gadow held up a hand to stop any celebration, “But first thing after breakfast tomorrow, I expect everyone to be ready to vote; one way or another, we’ve got a decision to make, and time isn’t a luxury we can afford to waste, so we confirm our course tomorrow for sure, no matter what.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep