Two hours and thirty minutes into her search for oxygen she had not yet seen anything that was not dust or stone. She did however find out that the skill system in this game was slightly different than any other she had played before. The twelve aptitudes she had to test in the beginning were back under the name Genesis in her game menu and she was reminded to check after she got a prompt on her visor after an hour.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Speed Genesis has gained 10% towards GEN2</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
After remembering the piloting drama in the POD and not being able to use certain buttons due to her not having a satisfactory piloting generation, she decided to check what the hell was up. Turned out every single of her "Aptitudes" was now marked as GEN1, with small bars underneath them indicating how far away the next level was, which she suspected to be called GEN2. As she looked at it, only speed, piloting and persistence had any progression and the rest were still at zero. Which was no surprise to her as she had only been playing for an hour even though it felt like ages. In the next couple of minutes that she "ran" or as she liked to call it, jump around in the dark, she began growing tired. Ten minutes after the progress message she got another message. Her stamina had been depleted, and if she continued, Oxygen would be used at three times the normal rate. As she checked the menu''s again she went to the options and stated there that she wanted a stamina bar in her field of vision, before she sat down to rest a little, she didn''t have enough oxygen as it is, so why risk it. After ten minutes of rest she was ready to go again.
Stepping through the dark, big jumps of two to three meters at a time and she had to admit, it was a great feeling of freedom, combined with a slight claustrophobic feeling. There being nothing to separate her bare body and the deadly cold and vacuum of space, other than a very old looking space suite was slightly worrying her. The sense of worry didn''t become any less when her search found another escape POD. She was just doing her regular jumping motions when suddenly little pieces of white painted metal came into the light beam that was mounted on top of her head. Stopping for a moment and looking around she could see that to her left a large amount of debris seemed to have piled up into one of the craters. Going closer, that debris had not piled up into a crater, but an escape POD that looked very similar to hers had made contact at an angle that could best be described as her original point blank course.
Seeing that the escape POD was completely destroyed, and had caused another crater on the planet made her shiver, thinking it could have been her if she had woken up a little later. She first decided to look through the wreckage to see, if by any chance, there would be something that she could still use for her current predicament. Sadly, it was the same as with her own POD, nothing good, and the moment an arm came loose from the wreckage and started to drift up she decided to keep going before she would puke in her only sanctuary.
With only thirty minutes remaining and still no sign of anything other than rock, she had had another message stating the progress to GEN2 in speed was now 20% underway which was all good and nice but she had to rest for another ten minutes right after it. Standing back up she looked around trying to find anything that didn''t look grey. As she stared into the blackness a small light caught her eye, the light seemed to be something on the surface of the planet, instead of being part of the stars in the sky. Feeling hopeful she began her track anew.
Time passed, and it didn''t seem that she was getting any closer to her only hope. first she thought it was just her imagination, but as she had only five minutes left, she began to panic slightly. How she had gotten an aptitude in mental fortitude of 4.9 she had no clue as she found herself getting ready for another fight or flight, struggle for life. She tried to move faster, but couldn''t, she looked at the clock again and it was now at three minutes, she had to go for it, even if it was nothing she had no time to look for something else, something more solid than just a hunch. She made her way for another two minutes, and slowly the light became bigger. Filled with new hope she continued onward. Thirty seconds left, and she finally saw the outlining of what looked like steel plated walls. She almost started cheering but then remembered that she still had to find something to get her oxygen up and running again.
As she arrived at what seemed like some sort of station, she started looking for a door. As the oxygen timer reached zero, she took one last breath before she started holding it and continuing on relentlessly. Looking for any opening. The panic that had subsided by her hope of finding this place was creeping back up, stuck in her throat. The station seemed to be made out of one big room adjourned by a few little rooms, but it was quite big and she just couldn''t find an opening. She was almost at the limit of what she could handle. Was she really going to suffocate right at the finish line? She tried to focus, and at the latest possible moment she finally found an opening. The opening was a hole in its exterior steel plating, about fifty centimeters in diameter, just enough to let her through. She dove into the hole and when she came into the room, she almost breathed a sigh of relieve, but stopped herself just in time.
The realization hit her like a hammer, hole in the hull means no oxygen... She wanted to scream, but that would mean the end, she wasn''t ready to give up, she wanted to succeed! Her vision began to blur, and she saw her health, which had crept up towards the forty percent mark, slowly going down again. The panic and adrenaline giving her back a little of sharpness as she looked through the room, there was nothing in here, the walls were clean, the door closed and the floor had taken damage as some floor panels seemed to be missing. She tried to jump accurately towards one of the holes in the floor but it was difficult to jump around accurately and she over shot her target by a meter, looking back she saw two steel cylinders. She only had twenty percent health left, and it was going down fast. She crouched down and crawled towards her target. She grabbed a tube on the back of her suit and pulled it out.
On the way, in the dark with nothing other to do then moving forward, she had already found out that this tube was needed to refill the oxygen tank on her back. Her face becoming slightly blue, she put the tube on the ending of the first steel cylinder, she didn''t care if it wasn''t oxygen, this was her only shot. One''s the tube was on the cylinder she felt around for some kind of button or another wheel to spin the cylinder open and release its contents. Finding what she was looking for on the underside of the cylinder she pressed the lever. It was empty. Nothing happened. She screamed internally, before quickly pulling off the tube and trying to fit it around the other steel cylinder, she was in critical condition, her eyes blurred and she couldn''t even see the health meter anymore. She started to black out as she finally put the tube on the final steel cylinder, diving towards the lever and pressing it. gasping for air, she passed out.
She awoke, breathing a long breath of oxygen through her nose, wide eyed she sat up, the slight movement made her come off the ground but she was still stuck to the cylinder that contained oxygen. She floated around a little and then pulled herself down again. She had made it. The oxygen meter giving her around 48 hours. She started laughing, this was one crazy game. She had almost died on two separate occasions and none had anything to do with some kind of alien or any other human being. No murder, Just survival. It should have been their slogan. Nothing more than a battle against the elements and she had already almost died two times in the span of four hours. She unhooked the tube after stabilizing herself on the floor.
The moment she unhooked herself the timer went back to three hours, which meant that her tank could only hold three hours of oxygen. Not that it was a major problem right now, she had at least 48 hours to figure out how to get into the rest of the complex. She also noticed that several of her Genesis skills had gone up again. Mental fortitude, and persistence had gone up with five percent. Spatial awareness with two and intelligence with one percent, the big winner though was Engineering as it had gone up with ten percent. She really had to find out what exactly the causes where for an increase in genesis, persistence seemed logical, but why had spatial awareness been triggered, and had she really fixed anything to cause Engineering to go up? And what was the difference in mental fortitude and persistence? Questions, questions and more questions... Normally she would just click on them or some question mark to find out their function, but those had been omitted.
She remained seated for a while pondering if she should log off before starting another three-hour stint of investigation, but decided against it. She was extremely curious about what was in the space station. And she could later find out what everything was for as Frank had hopefully found some useful intelligence on the game. She pushed herself of the floor and slightly floated up, she straightened herself and locked her feet between missing floor panels. Her feet seemed to have some weights in them as she could stand on the ground perfectly fine, something else to find the answer to.
She stood and assessed the room for a second time as her first time was not ideal for exploration. Contrary to her first thoughts the room did have a door. The problem was that the door seemed to be seamlessly integrated into the steel slaps that where the wall or hull of the space station, no handle, lever, keypad or anything fancier that would indicate that the door could be opened from the inside. She walked towards it with the intention of inspecting it closer but she over shot again and bumped with her head against the door, landing with one of her feet in one of the holes in the floor "Totally meant to do that... Can''t press door open, check" she mumbled, slightly embarrassed and praying to god nobody just saw that.
As she tried to take her foot out of the square meter of missing floor tile it wouldn''t budge, she looked down and saw it was stuck, sighing and thinking she must have suffered from oxygen deprivation to be captain obvious all of a sudden, she yanked a little harder and after a third try her boot is finally released. As her foot got out of the whole so did something else. Big, black and looking like a cross between a taser and a Swiss army knife, it spiraled out of the hole and towards the ceiling, before it can reach the ceiling it hits her straight in the visor as she was still looking down. "God dammit! Stop assaulting my only protection against the mauls of certain death by vacuum!" angry she shouts and at the same time grabs the object out of open space. Looking at it, her smile starts to grow until it reaches both her ears and shows a clean row of sparkling white teeth. "Hello rewards!" she says as she tried to find a way to inspect the object. After some thought she said "Inspect" and a status screen appears in front of her, naming and giving her the specs of the objects in her hand, "Lazy Devs, being original is hard these days isn''t it".
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<td style="text-align: center">Multi-tool XZ12003
Uncommon Edition
Used mostly to do repairs and other common and uncommon jobs, it''s a "I can do it all machine of bliss." - review Send in by S1ck</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
The system message was kind of different than what she was expecting, it was more of a sales pitch then a factory sheet with specs. She didn''t know if she liked the change, but suspecting she was not going to get asked for her opinion on the subject anytime soon, she was about to stuff the multi tool into her pocket when she realized an obvious flaw. She had no pockets. Feeling around on her space suit didn''t present a solution, "I''m definitely not going to be carrying this thing around indefinitely, unless... " after talking to herself a little she laughed and shook her head. She was in a game. "Inventory" and as she said it a screen on her left magically appeared, looking like a box. She tried to place the Multi tool in it, it went in perfectly but it took up two spaces instead of one, and was now in the right bottom corner. She now had another two spaces up and the rest of the rows that went on for six spaces to the left. All in all, the six by four would give her twenty-four inventory slots. But it would be filled up much faster than she was used to... So inventory limited to physical properties, she liked it, it was more realistic in a way.
"Ah…" she breathed in deep, smelling what she hoped was her own sweat and not the butt crack smell of the previous owner "sweet baby Jesus, what is a game in outer space without a multi tool, Houston we are finally ready for lift off! Get to the shuttle because I will fix your space ship in no time!" she laughed at her own jokes before she pushed the only button on it. She then observed the wonderful magic of the multi tool as the top changed shape into a screw driver, then a laser, then something that looked like a soldering iron, an electrical discharger, a wire cutter and about twelve other commonly used equipment''s for all your garden variety fixing. This thing could be a lifesaver and judging by her first few hours she was going to need all the help she could get! There was not that much more information, but the fact that it was indicated as an Uncommon edition sparked her interest.
Before she closed her inventory, she noticed two tabs, one was called extra inventory space, and the other extra inventory. As she pressed the former a system message told her that she did not have the 500 credits needed to add 4 slots to the left of my inventory. Pressing the other tab stated more or less the same, but this time the price was 5000 credits. She sighed and pressed the inventory screen away, she didn''t have a single credit to her name right now, so she really didn''t need to take a closer look.
After closing her inventory screen, she looked through the room a third time but there was nothing there except holes. She decided it was time to get out of here again. This time the goal would be to find a door that had something to get her into the other buildings of this space station. She could try to cut through the door but that could mean the possible destruction of an oxygen filled space. Determined to find a way in she got out of the room and back into the grey landscape that surrounded the space station. As she got out, it was still pitch black and she was thanking the good gods that she had a working flashlight. Slowly walking passed the metal cased walls of the space station she tried to search every nook and cranny. When she had last searched it, she had been in a slight rush and she didn''t want the rush to affect her chances of getting in this time around.
After a few steps, another, a little bigger, room came into view, this one was just like the room that had saved her, a cube that was symmetrical and almost directly placed against the cubical but much, much larger main body. One thing that was missing was a hole in the metal which prevented her from entering it. Somewhat disappointed she went on, and found two more metal rooms, before finally finding a door that lead into the main building. Of course, the door had a password protected lock, also unfortunate was that the door was sealed shut and randomly pressing buttons did not help. Only upside was that there were slight indications as to where some buttons were pressed more than the rest. The other upside, was that the person responsible for setting the lock was not a big fan of a lot of numbers. Seemingly the person in charge had a strong connection with the numbers one and zero. She grinned, but before she could do anything a small strip of light entered her field of vision, sparkling to life in the corner of her eye. Curious what this sudden change from pitch black to light could be she turned her head around and was just in time to watch something spectacular.
As she turned her head, a massive planet came around the corner, and just behind it was what looked like the local sun. Shining brightly into her visor, almost blinding her before a second visor automatically slid in front of the original one. The second visor was tinted blue and turned everything around her into an ocean blue sea of rock. As she continued to look, she saw that the planet that she was staring at, had to be at least a hundred times bigger than what she was on now, and judging by the fact that it seemed to fill up her entire view, it had to be reasonably close. "Well that explains a lot, I''m on a goddamn moon..." she whispered softly as she continued to watch the breathtaking scene.
The planet, was mostly green with spots of both grey and blue, and even though her second visor was distorting all the colors into a blue hue, she could still see a lot of different shades of all tree colors as the moon slowly turned and revealed more of the planet in front of her. This was also the first time she noticed that the moon that she was on was actually spinning around its own axle. Pondering on how any of this information was going to get her out of here she felt relieved that there seemed to be a habitable planet just around the corner. That was before the sun came fully around the big planet and everything around her started to heat up at an extreme rate.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Two system messages came on at the same time, giving her just enough time to read them before she desperately turned back towards the door and started punching in zero and one combinations, from just a zero and a one up till a four-digit key. "Calm down Sophie, first the four two-digit combination... Then the eight, three digit combinations and then the twelve, four digit combinations. You still got a minute before you get microwaved and well done so that gives you… two and half seconds per try... Ah god dammit, let''s hope I''m lucky…" she whispered to herself, to calm down the panic in her mind. The system messages had informed her that due to the lack of atmosphere, the local star SolX22Z1 would put out lethal amounts of radiation in one and half minute. Also, it would be above 300 degrees Celsius in the same time span of those one and a half minutes which would start cooking her medium rare due to a temperature cap of 200 degrees of the suit.
As she was tapping in the numbers, she was also starting to feel the heat rise, slowly little beats of sweat started to form on her face but she had to ignore them. As a drop of sweat glided over the bridge of her nose, stopping at the end and now dangerously hanging down, threatening to fall onto her visor, she was now tapping in the tree digit combinations. "one, zero, one, nothing alright next, one, one, one, nothing next one, zero, zero, nothing next one, zero, one, wait! Fuck I already done that one! Next…" she kept talking to herself, and it calmed her mind slightly. The sweat drops that were gathering in the underside of her visor were supplemented by a steady drop of more sweat coming from her nose and chin. Her skin began to hurt a little as the health bar in the top of her vision began decreasing. She was now half way, pressing in the four digit combinations, "one, one, one, zero" barely audible she went on and finally a little green light snapped into existence and the door slid out of her way. She didn''t think and just dove in, she only had fifteen seconds left and her skin was starting to blister.
Finally, inside, the door closed automatically, and she fell face first on the ground, laying there for a while, her visor against the white floor board, before turning around. As the blue visor slid back to its original position she was startled away from her blank state and started screaming "Fuck, Fuckerty, Fucking assholes! Stop trying to murder me with your laws of nature!" she screamed into nothingness. She opened her menu again, went to options and pressed the Celsius indicator and radiation meter to be added to her field of vision. She was about to close it before seeing the two remaining meters, which stated toxins and something that was blurred out as if it was not yet available. Not wanting to risk another close call she added toxins to the growing list of things she wanted to keep track off and closed her menu again. Goddamn Devs and their goddamn reality checks. She looked at the Celsius meter which was stating a nice and comfortable minus ten, and then took a look at the radiation meter, that was in the green. At least she was safe in here.
Well, she didn''t want to say it out loud yet, but at least she was inside. Pushing herself of the ground she took her first look into the big cube that was the main body of the space station. Aiming her flash light into the pitch blackness that was still coating the world in the space station. There had once been an airlock, but it had been destroyed, its door bent and broken giving her a perfect view into the rest, the room lacked windows, and had been left in chaos. Everywhere she looked were things drifting, from cans of food to the same cylinders she had found in the other room. A multitude of floor boards where floating around, and so did a lot of white chairs, a couple more multi tools and something that looked like a rifle. In the center of the room was a white table that had survived whatever catastrophe had happened and was still standing. Of course, survived didn''t mean without a scratch as the table had multiple scorch marks on it and had some corners that would not have been in the round table while it was new. So, did the walls. The oncewhite walls had been redecorated into something that looked black with smudges of a disturbing red color and fist sized holes.
Taking it all-in she decided to take a closer look, and she took a small jump trying not to overshoot anything this time and landing just in front of what didn''t have a very comforting shape. She slowly placed her hands on the unidentified object and stabilized it before turning it around. Staring back at her where the eyes of a man that was wearing the same although slightly fancier space suit as she was. The man that was frozen solid due to his visor braking, had blue eyes, a shaved head and a stubble, his eyebrows where slightly raised and a look of fear was evident. Of more importance at this point than the fact that the body was remarkably well preserved was that he was missing half his jaw and a part of his neck and that the roundish hole went all the way to the back making him an extra breathing hole. She looked around and saw that there were eight more suits floating around, some of them facing her. As she looked around, she heard a slightTingaccompanied by her first Quest message
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<td>
Quest!
You have found the final resting place of nine space marines.
Find out what happened to them and let the appropriate authorities know they are dead
Reward: 300 credits.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
"Oeeew Nice! My first quest!" she did a little moonwalk without really going anywhere before she started the searched of the whole room. The clues had to be here somewhere and if not that, then at least some useful stuff. As she checked the first body, she turned him around slowly in the air, not seeing anything she could use until she looked underneath his oxygen tank on the back of his suit. There was hidden something underneath the oxygen tank, it was black, slick and thin, like a rectangle shaped plate of some sort. She tried to pry it lose and then saw there was a pinning mechanism in place that was holding it underneath the oxygen tank. Getting her multi tool from her inventory she pressed the button until a 5-centimeter-long pin stuck out of the tool, nothing fancy but it would do its job. Sticking the pin in the hole, the black plate dislodged and started to move on its own. She looked at it and whispered "inspect" following was a surprising find.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Oxygen plate Z11
Common Edition
A device to make your Oxygen tank run more efficient. Cheap, but don''t expect high quality - review by John</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
"And here come the goodies! Now to get this thing inserted..." she was quite limber in her shoulders and after five minutes of fidgeting behind her back, she finally got it inserted and at the same time a system message popped up alerting her to the fact she had upgraded her standard space suit. Thanks, captain! She couldn''t be mad, this was awesome! She looked at her Air indicator and it had jumped from two hours and something to thirteen minutes more. "Alright it''s not the jackpot, but that''s eighteen minutes when full, and that is with just a common Oxygen plate!" she tried to convince herself, before she went on and searched the rest of the room. There was a lot of crap, and that was an understatement, she started just grabbing things at random and looking at them, but most was food.
She shoved all the food and chairs towards the corner where she knew the empty room was and let the space marines float around a bit more. She wasn''t certain as to what to do with them. A part of her said to just shove everything into the empty room and to forget about it but something inside of her thought it disrespectful to treat the death that way. Even if they were Npc''s and even if she had no clue what else to do with them. The first four she searched had nothing of interest to her, but then came the last three who made up for it, as one had a better lamp on his helmet then she had, one had a holster to slide a multi tool in on his back, and the last one had a plasma gun.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Ionic Headgear Q119
Uncommon Edition
Expensive, but great, especially the infra-red visor - review by CaptainO07</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table>
<tbody>
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<td style="text-align: center">Multi-tool holder
Common Edition
What you see is what you get - review by spacemar1ne</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table>
<tbody>
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<td style="text-align: center">Plasma gun D97
Common Edition
Military grade plasma gun, shoots a little slow but has a nice punch to it, mainly popular in the federation - review by bull1ts4bra1ns</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
The thing she thought was only a flash light turned out to be a flash light and a view additional visors. She clicked a button next to the visors, and to her surprise almost half the helmet came off. Only the original visor that was slightly yellow from the outside and a much lower part of the helmet stayed on. She followed up by feeling around on her own helmet and finding the exact same spot, she breathed out a little of her nerves, and whispered "Don''t become a popsicle, don''t become a popsicle, don’t... " before pressing the button and her own flash light and blue visor came off without consequences towards her general health.
Breathing out a sigh of relieve she replaced the old with the new and then switched the light on. She had to admit, it was quite the change, if before she was illuminating twenty-five percent of her field of vision, then now she was illuminating at least fifty percent. As she didn''t know how to change visors consciously, she ignored the remark that there was supposed to be an infra-red visor for now and went on and clipped the multi tool holder to the back of her suit and clipped the multi tool in it.
Now her inventory was empty again, but only for a moment as she stuffed the plasma gun in it, which filled one complete row of inventory. Luckily it was only a row and the last remaining three rows could still be used. She didn''t like using weapons in games, or outside of games for that matter, for obvious reasons. But she also didn''t want to look a gift horse in the mouth or wanted to die due to her principles leading to her being defenseless. So, she would keep it until she had either found an alternative or had to get over the principal of it all, in favor of survival. On second thought, she pulled the plasma rifle out again and studied it for a minute. If she had to use it, then she had to know how it worked at least. The weapon was about sixty centimeters long and was built like a cross between a shotgun and an assault rifle. It was completely black, and there were two grips, one with a trigger where the gun ended and banded down into the grip and one with a switch that indicated if you wanted to do short burst fire or single shots. The barrel was rounded with a slight hole in the middle, and from the middle of the barrel a glass like empty space went all the way towards the first handle where both sides came together and went on into the black metal. As she frowned at the weird weapon, she decided to give it a try.
She placed her legs slightly outwards, so she was standing in an inverted V shape and put the switch on singe shot. She aimed at part of the wall that had no door and pulled the trigger. For a moment, the only thing that happened was the front of the weapon glowing blue and the space that was empty filling up with some kind of energy. Then it shot out of the barrel and tore part of the wall away. She tried another shot, but the gun had to reload as the battery screen at the front of the gun started blinking. She waited a minute before it was at 100% again and then switched to burst shots, this time the weapon had to load again but she could shoot multiple shots, all only taking five percent out of the battery but also doing a lot less damage to the wall. She looked at the wall which was now in the worst condition of the entire station and smiled a little. At least if she found something that wanted to kill her she had means to defend herself. Not that it would have helped her in any way the last three times she almost died, but the thought was comforting.
As she tucked away the plasma gun into her inventory, she looked around for anything she missed. She hadn''t. All that was still floating in the open space of the main room where the bodies, with the junk she got out of the way floating in the far corner. "Guess it''s time to find out what is behind door number two" she said as she walked into the direction of the door that was situated next to the heap of junk. She looked for some kind of key card system or another code protected lock but this time it was almost too simple. There was a button that stated "Open…" She looked at it with a bit of suspicion, nothing had been this easy so far... She closed her eyes and backed away from the door as much as she could before pressing the button and hearing the door slide open. Nothing happened. Thank god. She walked into the room and found it to be filled to the ceiling with food and what looked to be a fried life support system.
She looked around a bit but there was nothing of note. Except for the extremely boring credit card like piece of plastic that dissolved into a sound of coins falling and the message that I found 30 credits. She had no clue what High risk high reward was for Nsquared, but up until now she was skeptical of how much more of a reward she had been given in comparison to the other options. As she came out of the room, she checked her Oxygen meter, but she still had about an hour before she had to perform a refill and, besides the obviously fried life support system, there was a collection of about twelve oxygen cylinders so she was not worrying about it anymore.
She walked towards the next room and opened it with the same kind of button she had found at the previous door. This time It were the barracks, with five bunk beds it was perfect for the nine dead bodies outside. She went into the room and took a look around. Again, there was nothing much of anything. Belongings yes, the same plasma gun seven times yes, but she did not want her inventory to be stuffed with four plasma guns as she was not going to use more than one and didn''t think she was going to meet a merchant anytime soon. What did pique her interest was that she found seven more credit card like pieces of plastic and that she now had 480 credits to her name. She decided that she would get all the marines to this room as it was something of a final resting place, or at least they would be close to their belongings. And out of her way and eyesight.
Twenty minutes and an oxygen refill later she was heading towards the third and final door. She opened the door and inside was a pretty hefty computer, the size was that of her life support POD, with wires and cables that led to the roof. There was only one screen that was about 40 centimeters in diameter, and it had a keyboard in front of it and a mouse pad next to it. "High tech…" mouse pads hadn''t been in use since the introduction of voice recognition and touch pads, and keyboards were starting to get replaced by brainwave interpreters. But she guessed all that stuff wasn''t really practical in outer space when you were pretty far away from the nearest computer repair shop, so outdated but sturdy was advised. She walked up to the screen and touched the mouse. The screen came to life, and she saw that it was running on some kind of Operating system she had no knowledge off. But it was easy enough to interpreted what the computer was doing as it was continuously uploading and sending data into outer space. This station must have been some kind of relay station for message she thought, sending messages to and from other places in the galaxy.
Cool, but not a reason why the crew was dead. Why kill the crew but not the machine they were here to protect? And it is by no means impossible to gain excess to the machine ones the marines where dead. So why are they dead, they had food, they had oxygen and suits that worked, and by the looks of their guns being in another room they did not kill each other. But then again the walls are destroyed and a lot of the dead marines were not completely whole anymore which indicates something shooting it...
As she was thinking she looked at the screen and noticed that something was blinking, and it looked like a message system. She opened the system and indeed it was something that had a lot in common with an email service. She looked through the messages, and it seemed the last 56 hadn''t been opened, the last one dating five years ago. She opened the first one that was unread and saw it was from something called the federation. Some colonel that was concerned due to their status being unknown, was sending over reinforcements. Sadly, they would arrive in three months'' notice and the email was send a week ago. So, no hitching a ride… she looked through the emails but most were asking for a status report and where automated messages send from, again, the federation. She opened the last opened email and read it.
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<td>
Hello Federal pigs,
Hereby we would like to congratulate you all on being fucked.Have fun!
Greetings, The Division.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
There was an attachment that downloaded itself as soon as she opened the email, and then the alarms went off, the darkness blasted with red lights that went off and on in a hurried frequency. A slightTingas a system message updated her quest intostay alive to tell the tale, donating the 300 credits to her name. She couldn''t be happy. As she turned around in her seat to look what was happening, a swarm of what looked like very angry one eyed robots flew in through the main room of the space station.