OutOfContext: This doesn't have to do much with any of my RP characters or of the Inheritance Cycle, but i did write all of it and am planning on publishing it when I get the story finished.

IC:
Juggling Emotions
“Captain, I’m sorry to wake you but, we’ve received a search request from Head Commander Lost. He would like us to examine a planet in this sector.”

“What planet?” the captain said with his face still in his pillow.

“The planet has been labeled as Planet 10443-02. Would you like to give it a nickname, sir?”

“Yes, let’s call it Planet George,” he said as he rolled over. He then crawled out of bed and stood up, nearly falling over from the lack of blood to his brain. Above him there was a low humming from Evy, the ship’s Artificial Intelligence unit, as she was processing information.

“I’m sorry Captain, but that nickname was already given to Planet 06915-17. Please try another nickname.”

The captain thought for a moment. “Okay, I got it. Let’s call it Planet O.O.T.W. for Out Of The Way.” Evy hummed again as she went through files. The captain finished getting dressed.

“That name has not been used before, would you like to use it?” she asked.

“Yep. Tell Lieutenant-Captain Alex that I’m on my way to the bridge now.”
Captain Mical Henderson walked down the long halls of the ship Evelyn. Evy, which short for Evelyn, was wired throughout the entire ship, so essentially she was the ship and the ship was her. The halls of the Evelyn were white except for the red cable covers that ran through them. The halls doors had a single diamond shaped window in them; the glass was completely resistant to every known substance, except plasma rays. The doors were opened by a green button and closed by a red one; these buttons were on both sides of the doors.

Captain Henderson walked into the bridge. “What do we got here, Casandra?”

“Well, as I’m sure Evy already told you, we have a search request from Earth to land and get some samples from Planet 10443-02.”

“Planet O.O.T.W., Lieutenant-Captain Alex,” Evy said through the intercom.

“What?” she asked with a puzzling look.

Evy said to her, “Captain Henderson has given the planet the nickname O.O.T.W.”

“O.O.T.W.?” She looked at Mical with a raised eyebrow.

“Stands for Out OF The Way.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Well I’ve the already received the coordinates; do you want us to start in that direction now?

He was slow to answer. “Yea, let’s get going.”

“Okay you heard the man, let’s get to it!” she said to the small crew of seven. “Evy?”

“Yes?”

“I want you to handle things for a while, if anything comes up alert me or the captain, alright?”

“Yes ma’am.” Evy used her holographic projection and assumed the form of a young woman of twenty.

As Casandra approached, Mical said, “I remember when she used to take the form of a toddler, back when I was seven riding with my dad. It’s hard to believe that she is twenty.”

“Well, you know most ships her age usually aren’t still operating at brand new condition. Your dad and his crew must have taken extremely good care of her.”

“He did. I remember that whenever they got home, they spent the first couple of days cleaning and fixing her, so that she was always in peak condition; I’d help them out too sometimes. Isn’t that right Evy?”

Evy looked back at him, “That is right, Captain.”

Casandra leaned in close to Mical and whispered, “I think that she is taken in by you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, she just has a certain attitude around you and stuff like that, you know.”

“She is a robot, so to speak; she doesn’t actually have an attitude, unless it is programmed into her hardware.”

Evy looked back at them with a frown on her face. “Actually, Mical,” she said with a sarcastic voice, “Your father updated me every chance he got, with emotions hardware, so I can, in fact, have an attitude and feelings. You of all people should know that we’re not just some computer program in a can,” she said slightly raising her voice.

“You stand corrected,” Casandra said to him with humor in her voice. “I think you might wanna apologize, don’t you think?” Mical looked at her with annoyance and she raised her eyebrow at him. “Well?”

“Alright. Evy?” he said, still annoyed.

“Yes?” she said without turning around.

“I,” he struggled with the words for a second. “I’m sorry.”

“Alright then, let’s get going.”

“Well, now that that is over how about we discuss some things in your office?” Casandra asked.

“Sure, what do you want to talk about?” Mical replied.

“It is kinda private, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, hang on,” he said scrunching his brow wondering what she wanted to talk about. “Evy, do you have everything under control here, so I can talk to Casandra?”

“I have everything under control here, Captain.”

“Okay, great.” They turned to leave.

“Oh, Captain, one more thing.” Mical turned around. “You have two hours before you need to go into hyper-sleep for the jump.”

“Okay, thanks Evy.” Mical and Casandra walked out of the bridge and into Mical’s office on the right. “Okay, so what is it that you want to talk to me about?” Mical asked Casandra, as he turned around to face her. She jumped at him unexpectedly, knocking him back a few steps.

She put her arms around his neck and kissed; she tried twisting her leg around his, but he stopped her. “What are you doing? I thought we were waiting to tell our families and get married. I thought we wanted to be different from everyone else in this God-forsaken universe.”

“We were, but that was about a year ago,” she said as she kissed him again. “We’ve known each other since when you dad first bought Evy and hired my dad to be part of the crew. We’ve felt this way about each other since then and if you are going to make us wait until we’re married, then let’s get married right now.” She said as she let go of Mical.

“I would like to do that too, but in case you haven’t noticed, were in the middle of the most desolate region in the galaxy. Where are we going to find someone to marry us?”

Casandra thought for a moment. “The captain of a ship can marry us.”

“Yes, but I’m the one who’d be getting married, so what captain are you talking about?”

“Excuse me Captain, but I may have a solution,” Evy said through the speakers in the room.

“Evy were you listening again? How many times have I told you to let me know when you’re listening,” Mical said, frustrated.

“Sorry,” she said in the most apologetic voice she could find.

Mical was going to say something, but Casandra stepped in. “That’s quite alright. Now you were saying?”

“I am, by the Artificial Intelligent Ship Committee, a registered captain of this ship, so therefore I can legally marry you two.”

Casandra looked over at Mical, her face gleaming in happiness, “Did you hear that? Evy can marry us! We can get married. We can get married. We can get married!” she hugged him around the neck so tight he almost wasn’t able to breathe.

“One time is quite enough, and yes I heard that.” He said with a little smile. “Wait, what about our families?”

“Uh, we can tell them when we get back. They all knew that we were probably going to get married one day, so it really doesn’t matter.”

“Okay, so what do we do now?”

“First, we tell the crew that we’re getting married on the ship. Then we get ready, and lastly we ask Evy a question.” Mical looked at her with a funny look. “Evy, can we postpone the hyper-jump till tomorrow?”

“I guess I could, but we’ll be one day behind schedule.”

“Oh, that’s all right, we’ll take the heat won’t we.” Mical said as he put his arm around Casandra’s waist.

“Yep. Evy tell the crew that we are going to have a marriage ceremony in two hours.”

“Yes, Lieutenant-Captain Alex.”

“Mical said to Evy, “Now you realize that in two hours it will be Lieutenant-Captain Henderson, don’t you, so you can just start calling us by our first names. Okay?”

“Okay Captain.”

During the two hours they moved all of Casandra’s belongings into Mical’s quarters because he had the bigger room due to him being the captain; they also made other preparations for during and after the wedding.

When the two hours had run its course Captain Mical Henderson was standing on the bridge in his best and only suit. His dark brown hair was combed back with his hand and held in place with some honey. His suit was black and green stripped; he hated it. His tie was no better, being bright pink. Evy’s hologram was standing next to him; she started playing the music through the speakers and the best man and bride’s maid walked out to the little platform Mical was on. All the other members of the crew were sitting in chairs as to be the witnesses.

Evy started to play the Bridal Chorus, and Casandra started down the aisle by herself. She was dressed in her prom dress, the only one she had. It was a dull yellow, with lace every foot that encircled the dress. Her long, brown hair was put up into a pony tail. In her hands she held a glass pot that held a small shrub that had not yet been planted in greenery. She slowly approached the platform, and then stopped. Mical stepped down and took her arm and led her up onto the terrace.

Evy started the ceremony, which took no more than half an hour. She ended with the words, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss your bride.” Mical reached over, took Casandra’s face in his hands, and kissed her.

Mical and Casandra walked hand in hand down the aisle to where a table sat with a small cake that the cook, Earny, had made. Mical picked up the knife that was lying on the table and Casandra put her hand on his and they cut the cake.

After the proceedings were through, the clock read nine and Captain Henderson got up on his chair and said “Everyone, me and my beautiful wife,” he motioned toward Casandra, “would like to thank you all for coming, but we are going to be turning in. Wily, you’re going to be the watchman tonight. If anything goes wrong that Evy can’t fix, you take care of it, alright?”

“Yes sir.”

“Okay then. Everyone you are free to go about your business.” He hopped down from his chair and put out his hand to his bride. “Are you coming Cas?”

Her eyes twinkled as she put her hand in his and answered, “I believe I shall,” a half smile on her face. He helped her up and they walked back to Mical’s quarters, his hand around her waist.

A few hours later, Wily’s voice came over the intercom and said, “Captain are you awake?”

Mical reached over and replied with humor, “Wily, it’s my wedding night; what do you think?”

Wily chuckled over the radio. “Sorry I interrupted.”

Casandra replied this time. “That’s alright. Whatcha need?”

“I was running the twenty-four hourly system’s check and there appears to be a problem with the rear thruster; Evy couldn’t fix it so I ran a diagnostics on it and it says that a fuel line has snapped for some unknown reason.”

Mical said, “Okay, so my guess is that you would like to do something about it, am I right?”

“Yes you are; I’d like permission to go out and fix it.”

“Permission granted,” Mical said into the microphone. “And Wily? Wake up Cathy. I don’t want you out there without anybody inside to keep an eye on you and the monitors.”

“Will do sir.”

Mical and Cas woke up to the sound of Evy blaring, “Red Alert! Red Alert! Unknown substance entering area!” over and over. They hurriedly dressed themselves and ran to the bridge. Everyone but Wily was already there.
Mical looked over at Cathy and bellowed above the siren, “Is Wily finished yet?”

“No sir, but his nearly there.”

“Tell him to hurry his butt up; we don’t know what the heck that stuff is!”

She relayed the message to Wily. His voice came back, “I’m hurrying! I’m hurrying! I just need to solder on this last piece here.”

Cas was busy reading the monitors when suddenly she shrieked, “That’s a Tsaleht ship! Oh man, they’ve always been pissed off about losing the war. They’re going to kill us if they get the chance.”

Mical raced to where Cathy was standing and grabbed the microphone. “Wily get in here, now!”

“I can’t,” was his frantic reply. “I can’t leave until I get this thruster fixed! I gotta stay out here!”

Mical boomed into the microphone. “No! Now! We’re going to have to make the jump!”

“We can’t do anything until I get this fixed! Give me two minutes and everything’ll be online again.”

Mical slammed his fist into the desk frustrated, his mind racing. “Okay, everyone but Casandra, into your TUBEs now! Cas run to the docking bay and get ready to reel Wily in. Evy start getting yourself ready for the jump.”

Mical looked out the bridge’s window. The Tsaleht ship was closing in to firing range. He sprinted back to the radio. “Wily let’s go! Move it!”
“It’s almost done. Come on baby, come on. And,” Mical could hear the soldering iron going for all its worth, “done!”

The bridges monitors showed that all the thrusters were now operational. “Good, use your pack and get back in here!” he pushed the intercom button so Casandra could hear to. “Cas should be towing you in now.” He glanced out the window; the Tsaleht ship had reached firing distance and was charging their plasma guns.

Wily was watching the ship too and he yelled, “You guys got to get out of here! Just leave me out here! My life’s not worth all yours, hurry!”

Mical didn’t object; he knew Wily was right. He told Evy to make sure that she could jump at a moment’s notice as he took off down the hall for Casandra; he knew she would be protesting. When he got to the bay, she was by the window crying and telling Wily to hurry and get inside.

Mical grabbed her, she fought and kicked and screamed that they couldn’t leave him out there. He tried to soothe her as he carried her to the TUBEs bay, but to ill effect. He struggled to get her into her TUBE and when he finally did, Evy released an anesthesia into it as she had done with the others.

As Mical crawled into his own TUBE, he said, “Evy as soon as I’m out, I want you to jump!”

“I’m sorry to object, but our hardware is built so that we can’t make a jump, or anything along those lines, as long as someone in still outside. You will have to manually override me. Sorry.”

Mical popped out of his TUBE and shot to the computer. “What are the access codes?” She gave him an impressive list of numbers and letters.
After he entered all of them, a female voice, not Evy’s, said, “Normal functioning systems overridden.” Mical jumped back into his TUBE and said to proceed with instructions as the door latched.

Meanwhile Wily was doing all he could to strap himself to the side of the Evelyn, so that he wouldn’t be swinging around. He looked back at Evy’s thrusters; they were reddening with the heat. He clamped his suit belt around one of the rungs that were on the outside of the ship.

With a loud bang, the Evelyn flew through space at a speed of 3LS. Wily was flattened against her; the strain on his belt and straps was incredible. Suddenly they snapped and he stopped, though the ship kept moving. In a fraction of a second his helmet came into contact with shell around the thruster. The glass exploded from the force of the impact. Hydrogen rushed into his suit at -240 C˚; he froze instantly. He then bounced back behind the thruster and was incinerated.

Three hours later, when Evy woke up everybody, the rest of the crew realized that Wily had not made it inside in time for the jump. Everyone ran hurriedly to the window to see if maybe he had survived, except for Mical, who knew that no one could survive a trip through space at 3LS. Everyone else came to that realization just moments later, when they found that Wily’s cable had broken.

They held a short service for him. Cathy got up and said, “Wily used to always joke around and his favorite joke was: Do you know why girl always wear make-up and perfume? It’s because their ugly and they stink.” Everyone got a slight smile on their face at that.

Mical stood up again and said, “I’ve decided to give Planet O.O.T.W. the new nickname of Planet Wily.” He looked up, “For you buddy.”

OOC: so what do you think should i post the rest?

Definitely, I want to know why they had to go to that planet!

A Disturbing Beginning
A couple hours later, the Evelyn was entering Planet Wily’s orbit. Captain Mical had everyone gather into the landing shuttle and they entered the planet’s atmosphere. The planet’s surface had a dull, grey look to it; there were stalactites that stuck upward out of the ground, creating sharp, dagger-like points.

The ship, unable to land, hovered above the ground as Eomett was lowered down to the surface. He wore his suit because Evy said the planet had a complete lack of oxygen. When he touched ground he unhooked himself from the cable, so that he could move about freely. He took a few steps and bent over and scooped up some soil for testing. Afterward he stood and looked around; he yelped suddenly.

“What, what is it?” Mical asked.

“I thought I saw something.”

“Nonsense, Evy says the only living thing down there is you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I am. Now I want you to get the ground temperature.”

Eomett took out is ground thermometer and tested the ground. “It reads a smoking one hundred two degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Wow, that’s really hot for a planet’s--” Evy and Cathy shrieked. Mical jerked around. “What’s wrong?”

They said together, “There’s something out there.” They pointed out the window.

He hurried over to them, “Where? I don’t see anything.”

“It’s out there, I know it is,” said Casandra nervously. She stepped over to the radio and said, “Eomett, you need to get in here now.”

“I’m already on my way,” came the reply. “This planet gives me the creeps; it feels like something is watching and stalking me.” A few seconds went by when Eomett yelled through the speakers.

“What is it?!”

He was breathing heavily when he said, “Nothing. Nothing, I thought something jumped on me. Okay, I’m down here get me, now get me up there.” They hauled him up and he switched out of his suit in the decontamination room. He came out with his hand on his side, his shirt was stained red.

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing. The suit just pinched and cut me when I was taking it off.”

“Here let me see it,” the ship’s doctor, Ramxe, said. Eomett lifted up the side of his shirt; the cut was bleeding and very deep. Ramxe said, “When we get back I better clean that up with some Hydrogen-Isopropyl so it doesn’t get infected and then I’ll need to stitch it up.” Mical called everyone to their seats so that they could leave.

When they finally reached the Evelyn, Eomett had developed a terrible stomach ache and Ramxe grew more concerned, so she hurried him to Sick Bay. Resen, the closest person to a scientist on the ship, took the soil samples to test them in the geology lab.

Sometime later, after Mical had the navigator, Vomer, set a course for Earth, Eomett and Ramxe returned. Ramxe motioned him and Casandra to come speak with her out of earshot of the others.

“Is something wrong with Eomett?” Casandra asked as they neared her.

“I’m not sure. That cut didn’t look like it was cut by the space suit. If it had, then the edges would have a rigid, shredded look, but it’s as clean a cut as if I had done it with my scalpel.” Mical was going to say something, but Ramxe continue. “He believes that it was the suit, because after I saw that cut I hooked him up to the polygraph, without his knowledge, to see if that’s what really happened. It showed that he was telling the truth, but I still think that something else cut him and he just thinks it was the suit.”

“Did you run any tests on it?”

“Yes, Mical, I’m a doctor it’s my job. Anyway, the tests came up empty, so I don’t know what it was, but I suggest that we keep an eye on him for a few days. Make sure you’re discreet about it though. I told him to check back in with me every day for a week.”

“Okay good, uh, I want you to keep testing him for any living organisms that aren’t supposed to be in his body. I mean with him, Cathy and Cas saying that there was something on that planet, there might have been something there; I don’t know how to check for sure.”

Casandra interrupted, “Evy has cameras all over the ship right?” Evy said that she did. “So, why don’t we play the recordings on the screen for everyone to watch? I mean with every one watching, we won’t miss a thing and Evy can scan them too, to pick up any abnormal movements or life forms.”

“That’s a good idea.” Mical walked over to the intercom and told Resen to come to the bridge. When Resen got there, Mical said, “Everyone, Evy’s going to play the recordings from the expedition and I want you all to watch and see if there is anything out there moving that wasn’t Eomett, got it?” Everyone nodded their heads. “Okay Evy, start playing.”

Everyone was glued to the screen, watching and observing every little detail. No one saw anything, and then suddenly Casandra yelled, “Stop!” Evy stopped the recording. “Look in the corner on the right do you see that? Evy zoom in on the right-hand bottom corner. Now a little to the left, okay now zoom out a little bit.”

The room was dead silent. Looking back at them through blood red eyes was a creature with shiny skin that was as black as night. Its structure was small and boney; it had claws that looked sharp enough to cut Black Matter. Its head was shaped like a cat’s, but held no fur; there were no apparent ears either.

Mical said to Evy, “I want you to save this picture and I want you to run through our life form existence files and see if this matches anything. Also, I want you to scan the tapes and see how many times you can find these creatures in your recordings.”

“Yes, Captain Henderson,” was Evy’s reply. A few minutes later Evy said, “There is no record of this type of species ever being found. I also counted over a hundred sightings of these creatures throughout the whole expedition.”

Everyone had a look of dread on their faces, when Mical asked, “Evy, is it possible that one of these things could’ve gotten on to the ship?”

“No, Captain, it is not possible at all. They would’ve had to breach the shuttles hull in order to do that, and if they had the alarms would’ve gone off.”

“Did you guys hear that? There is absolutely no reason that you guys need to worry; there is no way one of those things could’ve gotten on this ship without our knowledge. I don’t want you to worry about his, alright?” Everyone nodded. “Okay, back to work.”

Later that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Mical had Evy run a sweep through the ship to make sure that nothing had gotten in; the sweep revealed that nothing had managed to get in.

The next day was the scheduled jump day; Mical asked Evy if she was ready to make the jump.

“No Captain, I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“For some reason I cannot filter the oxygen needed into the tanks.”

Eomett asked, “Why do you need to filter oxygen into your tanks?”

Calli, the ship’s engineer, stepped forward. “Because pure oxygen is highly combustible. The greenery not only supplies enough oxygen for the entire ship, but also enough for fuel.” Evy agreed with her.

“So is there anything out of the ordinary, something broken or clogged up?”

“Not that my sensors can pick up.”

“Hmm, Cathy, why don’t you go down and see if you can find the problem.”

“Aye, Aye sir.”

She left and Calli approached Mical and Casandra. “Can I show you guys something?”

“Um, sure, I guess. What is it?”

“You see,” she said as she led them to her room. It was big and spacious for a person with the rank of Private. The entire left half of the room was walled off by a black sheet.

Mical, who didn’t care too much about his crew’s personal lives was forced to ask, “What’s this?”

“That is what I wanted to show you,” she said as she pulled back the sheet. Hanging off the floor a few inches was a robot. “She’s made out of titanium.”

“She?”

“Yeah, I started making her in my spare time as just something to do, then with Wily gone, I thought I better go ahead and get her finished. I made it for Evy, so that she won’t just be a hologram anymore. She should be extremely fast; I haven’t tested her yet because I need to load the receptor program for Evy to be able to control it.”

“And that is why you needed me, so I could give you the program, right?”

“That is correct.”

“Uh huh, let me ask Evy about this. Evy, what do you think about this?”

“I like the idea of actually being able to do physical things; I’ve been helping Calli put it together.”

“Thanks for letting me know, I mean I’m just the Captain I don’t need to know about these things,” Mical said, obviously upset.

Calli stepped in, “I told her not to say anything, it was suppose to be a surprise, but when Evy said that she couldn’t give me the program, I knew the secret was up.”

“Oh, sorry. Cas, Darling, do you know where that program disk is?” Casandra nodded her head. “Could you go get that for us?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back.” She left the room

After the door closed behind Casandra, Calli walked over to Mical and said, “So I guess you and me are over now, huh?”

Mical looked at her with a hint of disturbance. “What are you talking about? We’ve been over for a few years now; I’m in live with Cas now.”

“Mical, you can’t tell me that you don’t have any desire for me. I mean you proposed to me and then on our wedding day you suddenly disappear. Have you even told Casandra about us?” Mical remained silent, but held her gaze. “I didn’t think so. Maybe I should tell her when she gets back, huh?” she turned to face the door.

Mical grabbed her arm and jerked her around. “You will say nothing about that, because as far as I’m concerned, you and me never existed! You got that?” the door started to open and Mical let go of Calli and stepped back holding her stare for a second.

Casandra walked in; she gave Mical the disk, “Here you go.” Then she kissed him as if to prove an unknown point.

Mical said thank you and turned to give Calli the disk. When she went to take it he mouthed the words, ‘Keep it shut.’ She swallowed, as if out of fear, and took the disk.

She walked over to her computer, which was connected to the robot, and inserted the disk; she downloaded the program. “Okay Evy, you have control of it now.”

The robot came alive; it unclipped itself and stepped down from its stand. Evy moved her arms and legs around to get a feel for this new mobility.

“Well Evy,” Mical asked, “how does it feel?”

“Different Captain. Different.” She spoke out of the speakers in the room instead of through the robot’s mouth. Casandra asked why that was.

“I decided that it would just be easier to have her use what she’s already using.”

“Oh.”

Mical asked, “Have you showed this to anyone else yet?” Calli shook her head. “Okay, then I don’t want you to. She will not be used at all unless absolutely necessary, alright?” Casandra and Calli nodded.

“Excuse me Captain, but Resen has requested your presence in the geology lab.”

“Okay tell him I’ll be right there.” As he turned to leave he kissed Casandra and glanced at Calli to say ‘I’ll be watching you even when you don’t know it.’

When the door closed behind him, Cas turned to Calli and said, “If you ever threaten him like that again, I will kill you!” Calli was taken aback by this side of Casandra that she had never seen before.

“You heard that?”

“Not exactly, Evy told me. And again I say ‘If you ever threaten him like that I will kill and absolutely no one will be able to stop me. You got that?” Calli nodded. Casandra then walked out of the room, leaving Calli there, mouth agape.

Mical entered the geology lab and walked over to Resen; he was looking into a microscope. Without looking up he said, “How have you been Captain?”

Mical replied, “Good thank you. Evy said that you wanted to see me.”

“Yes I did, I wanted you to see these test results.” He walked over to a computer screen. On the screen was a bunch of graphs and chemical formulas.

“I’m not a scientist, just a ship captain, so I have no idea what all this stuff is.”

“I didn’t expect you to Captain. These formulas here represent what materials were taken from the planet’s surface. They all point to one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“That the planet’s surface is highly toxic. If even if we could drop enough ATOM bombs to change the nitrogen on the planet to oxygen the planet would still be deadly and we’d have to walk on it in our space suits.”

“Okay two questions: what is an ATOM bomb and if that is true then how possible for those creatures to survive?”

“The ATOM bomb stands for Atomic Transformation Of Matter. It changes seventy-five percent of the air composition to oxygen. As for your other question, I have absolutely no answer. They must have built up some sort of immunity to the toxins.”

“Well then it’s a good thing that none of those things got aboard.”

“How do you know that?”

“I had Evy run a check throughout the ship and it came up empty.”

“But remember how she didn’t pick up any of those things outside of the ship, she said that only Eomett was out there, yet when we checked there were over one hundred of them crawling about.”

“It hadn’t occurred to me that way. You’re right maybe one of them did manage to get one the ship. But wait, we would’ve seen it by now; Evy would’ve sensed it.”

“I suppose, but the Evelyn is a very large ship, over a mile in diameter. It is possible, not likely, but possible that it could’ve avoided the sensor and cameras.”

“You’re right it could’ve; I’ll put Evy in yellow-code that way we will know right away of one of them is spotted.” Mical left the geology room and headed to the bridge. He met Casandra on the way. “Did you have a nice talk with Calli?”

“Yep we had a very nice talk.”

“Did she mention anything to you about me?”

“No. What tuff would she have to say about you?”

“Oh nothing, nothing at all.”

As they were walking to the bridge Cathy was climbing out of the man-hole that led to the engine room. They stopped and asked what she had found out.

“There doesn’t seem to be a problem with anything down there, or in the greenery. The simple fact is that something is wrong with Evy. To find out what it is, I might have to take apart the whole oxygen system.”

“We can’t have you do that.”

“Then I guess that we’ll just have to get back to earth normal speed.”

“I guess so. Well at any rate you did good, so go and freshen up.”

“Will do.”

Mical and Casandra walked to the bridge, and then they set the Evelyn in code-yellow. “Now that that is done how about you and me go to?” Casandra said yawning.

“I’m game for that; I’m pooped. I haven’t gotten more than seven hours of sleep the last seventy-two hours.”

The next several weeks went on uneventful. Eomett’s wound healed up completely, with no signs of anything else wrong. Evy was removed from code-yellow, because the entire ship was searched by everyone; absolutely no sign of anything abnormal was found.

Then one night Eomett woke up screaming and clutching at his stomach. After a minute or so, he realized that it was just a nightmare and he relaxed. He the felt something in his stomach moving around, at first he thought that it was just his intestine adjusting its contents. When it started moving more vigorously he became alarmed. It felt like whatever it was, was suddenly growing larger.

He jumped out of his bed and started running toward the sick bay. As he was going he yelled, “Evy get everyone to sick bay, now! Red Alert!”

Evy started blaring, “Red Alert, Everyone to sick! Red Alert, Everyone to sick bay!” Over and over.

Mical woke up. “What the—” he heard Evy blaring and woke up Casandra. “Cas we need to get to Sick Bay; something’s wrong.” They jumped out of bed and hurriedly dressed themselves. They darted out into the hall and started for Sick Bay. They saw Ramxe come out of her room bouncing on one foot, trying to put her shoe on the other. By the time they caught up with her she was in a dead run.

Calli, Earny, Resen, and Vomer’s rooms were on the other side of the ship, so they didn’t meet up with Mical and his small group.

Mical suddenly remembered to ask Evy what was going on. “What’s happening Evy?”

“I’m not sure, Captain; Eomett suddenly went crazy and started running for Sick Bay and told me to get everyone there.” Mical wondered why Eomett wanted everyone to be in Sick Bay; he soon got his unpleasant answer.

As they rounded the curve of the hall, they saw Eomett up the hallway lying on the ground. He was flopping around like a fish out of water, it looked like he was trying to scream but the only sound was his body thumping the floor. He saw them and said in low raspy voice, “Help me.”

His body went limp for a second, then it role over onto its stomach and his back started to bend up, though his stomach remained firmly on the floor. Mical and his group stepped back.

The skin looked as if it would split at any second. There was a loud snap as Eomett’s back broke. The sharp pieces of his shattered vertebra pieced his skin, which then started to split down the jagged line that was just a few seconds ago his backbone. Out of his entrails rose a hunched over beast with skin as black as night.

At once the three standing there knew what it was. The others came around the bend just then and stopped just ten feet away from the vile creature. Mical, in a hushed voice, told them to back up slowly and when out of sight go and grab the plasma guns. When they were gone he returned his attention to the beast that was just standing there, with its feet in Eomett’s body.

It now only partially resembled the tiny, one foot creature seen in the video. It now stood four feet tall, while hunched over, its claws had grow several inched longer and still looked strong enough to slice Black Matter. Its head still somewhat resembled a cat’s; it was shaped like a sphere now with a diameter was about one and a half feet long. Its body had lost the boney shape and had now become a sleeker, smoother surface.

It just stood there for several minutes, then Mical noticed something; it was growing in size! When the others finally came up behind Mical, it had reached a hunched height of six feet. Mical took the gun that Earny gave him and pointed it at the creatures head. He squeezed the trigger. Instead of its head exploding from the heat of the plasma gun, it seemed to become more functional from the heat.

It reared back its head and roared; it sounded like the explosion of a Carbon-14 bomb. As it stretched everyone saw that it had a tail that came a deathly sharp point. Its teeth were as clear as air, but just as deadly as the tail. Its red eyes were two inch diameter circles.

Mical stopped shooting it with the plasma gun and started to step back. The creature saw them and started toward them. Calli stepped forward with a six gauge double-barrel shotgun and pulled the only trigger. The pellets hit the creatures face and repelled off the skin back at the group as if she had shot a rock.

The group realizing that they were in trouble ran back several yards to the door and closed it with the creature on the other side. The creature slammed into the door with all its might; the door held. Mical told Vomer to run around to the other side and shut all the doors. As he left the creature slammed into the door for a third time, it gave a little. Everyone’s mind scrambled for an idea to kill the thing. Mical suddenly said, “Evy I want you to filter in the Hydrogen from outside into that part of the ship.”

“Yes sir.” Seconds later there was a blowing sound in the other room and it grew smoggy from the sudden combination of gases. The thudding against the door stopped, so everyone gathered at the window to see if the thing died. Then suddenly the creature banged into the glass again, cracking it.

Mical thought again. “Evy, I want you to suck absolutely every bit of air out of there,” Mical said. He hoped that the lack of air would kill the creature or crush it due to the pressure that there would be without any air to fill it; neither happened.

Mical, going out of his mind, thought of one last thing. “Evy, fill the hall with the anesthesia, hopefully it’s susceptible to that.” Seconds later the room was filled with a green gas, no one could see anything in there. The creature stopped banging on the door and it was quiet for several minutes. As the gas cleared Mical looked through the glass, there was nothing in there. “Evy, were did it go?!”

“I don’t know Captain; I can’t read their life forms remember.”

Mical grabbed his head in frustration. “Okay, I want this entire half of the ship locked down. Nothing, not even air, gets through understand?” The crew nodded. “Evy, where is Vomer? He should be here by now.”

“He is six point nine three seconds away, from your position.” Mical looked behind him and saw Vomer come running around the bend. When he reached them he stopped and bent over, with his hands on his knees, panting. Mical asked him if he got all the doors shut and if he saw the creature.

“I got the door shut, but,” he put his hand on his stomach and threw up yesterday’s dinner. “I didn’t see the thing.”

OOC: I am no Tom Clancy. To much detail can kill a story, and this is just a rough draft.

IC:
“Calli, where did you get that gun?”

“I, uh, sorta smuggled it aboard, but a lot of good it did me. Did you see those BBs? They bounced off it; I might as well have just not shot. It didn’t even slow the thing down. I mean a single barrel six gauge can totally obliterate one foot thick Plexiglas, and I used a double barrel! But it didn’t even make a scratch, not even when the BBs hit that creature in the eye!” She was almost screaming with hysteria now.

Mical put out his hands to calm her and the rest of the crew down. “Calm down, just calm down; this side is completely sealed off. We’ve had a lot happen, so let’s all go back to bed; this area is completely sealed off,” he repeated not only to ensure the crew but also himself. “Okay? You got me? Good. Now Evy, I want code-yellow, completely operational tonight. And everybody, I want you all to take a sedative before you go to bed; it’ll help you sleep.”

Everyone slowly returned to their rooms, Mical and Casandra were no exception. Mical usually didn’t take things like sedatives, because he didn’t like the idea of forcing his body to do something, but he made an exception.

Mical laid in bed staring at the ceiling, while Casandra, next to him, turned and tossed; she couldn’t sleep either, not even with the help of a sedative.
Finally she just sat up, her shirt all twisted and revealing. She adjusted it and said to Mical, “What are we going to do about this?”

“I don’t know,” came the reply from the dark.

“There has to be something we can do. We’ve tried all the major weapons and they did nothing. It’ll take a beast of equal size and strength to even hurt that thing and where are we going to get something like that?”
Mical suddenly sat up. “The robot! That’s it, we can use the robot!”

“Hey yeah, Calli said it was strong and fast; Evy can use it to kill her!”

“Her? How do you know it’s a ‘her’?”

“I just… uh I just… I just have a feeling that it’s a ‘her’” Mical acknowledged with an Oh. Casandra asked, “Are you going to have Calli do that then?”

“Yeah, but tomorrow.”

“Okay. Well now what are we going to do? You can’t sleep and I can’t, so what should we do?”

“I think I’m finally going to go to sleep.” Mical laid back down. Casandra, disappointed, laid down and slid into his arms and the both of them fell asleep.

Later that night Mical woke up to a sound in his room, at first he thought it was Casandra she was still laying next to him. He sat still for a moment and didn’t hear anything; he laid back down and closed his eyes. He then heard it again and sat up; sweat beaded on his forehead.

He reached over to wake up Casandra, but stopped when he felt the sheet around her. It was wet and slightly warm. He touched her leg; it was still warm and dry. He slid his hand up her body toward her head. As his hand got closer to her chest, her shirt felt damp. He slid his hand to her throat and stopped. He felt a huge gouge in it and he realized the wet stuff he was touching was blood.

He felt his face go white as he fumbled around trying to find the emergency flashlight he kept next to the bed. He finally found it and shined the light on Casandra’s body. Her throat had been slit wide open; most of the blood had already gushed out. He felt sick and terrified at the same moment, whatever had done this could still be lurking in the darkness the surrounded him.

He heard a slight clicking sound above him; he clicked the light off. He pointed it straight up, hesitated, and then flicked it on. Staring back at him through those blood red eyes was the alien creature. Mical’s heart skipped and while staring into those eyes, he couldn’t get himself to move.

Suddenly the thing let go of the ceiling and half fell half lunged for him. Mical found his strength and jumped out of the way of the creature. He landed on the floor and lost this footing and fell. The creature was on him as soon as he turned over. He put his arms up to stop it from tearing away at his face. He protected his face but not his arms.

The flashlight had fallen and pointed at a mirror which slightly lighted the room. Mical looked around for something to use as a weapon, anything. He saw a fork on the floor just out of arm’s reach, it must’ve fallen off his dinner plate that night since he and Casandra had eaten in their room.

As the creature was attacking him, he slowly inched over toward the fork. When it was in arm’s reach, he kicked the creature with everything he had. It stopped attacking him for a brief second. In that second Mical grabbed the fork. As the alien came down to attack again, Mical stabbed it in the eye.

It howled and reared back in pain. Mical jumped up and grabbed the lamp he had received from his grandmother years before, and whacked the alien’s head; it spiraled backward in to the bed. Mical pocked it with the busted end of the lamp; it didn’t move. He pushed the button for the lights, but they failed to turn on. He walked over to the creature and looked at it, then at Casandra’s body.

He felt a sudden chill go through his body, the kind that you get when you realize something you didn’t want to know. He turned and walked toward the door. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain go through his chest. He looked down to see the alien’s tail bust through his chest. It picked him up off the ground and brought him around so he was facing the creature. He felt the life start exiting his body.

The creature appeared to have what seemed as a smile on its face in the dim light. The room lights finally clicked on as the creature said in a mocking voice, “You lose!”

Mical screamed, “NO!” with his last breath.

Casandra whacked him across the head with a pillow; he woke up. She said, “I’m sorry I had to hit you, but you wouldn’t wake up and, and well you hit me in the first place.”

Mical came around and looked at Casandra with sheer joy, though she couldn’t see it. Mical then heard a low growl from the middle of the bedroom; fear flooded his face. He reached over turned on the lights. He looked at Casandra with a questioning look.

She said, “They were scared,” with a slight smile. On the floor of his bedroom, Mical saw the entire crew sleeping. The growl he had heard was just Earny snoring. Vomer started to wake up.

He said, “Hey could you turn off the lights? I’m trying to sleep.”

“No! This is my bedroom and I will do whatever the heck I please. Now all of you get out! Go sleep in your own room!” Everyone started to wake up. “I mean it! All you get out! You’re not children, your adults!” Calli was about to walk out the door when Mical said, “Wait. I want you to get the robot you built up and running for Evy to use. We’re going to send her out after the alien tomorrow. Alright? You’re dismissed.”

As the door closed behind Calli, Mical looked at Casandra and said, “You do know that this is our room, right?”

“Yeah, of course I know that.”

“So then why did you let them in?”

“Well, um, I’m not exactly sure, but I think it has to do something with my motherly instincts.”

“Your motherly instincts?” Mical said sarcastically.

“Yes. I have motherly instincts. Vomer came in all scared and terrified; he wanted to wake you up to ask you something, but I told him that you had a long day and that you shouldn’t be disturbed. He was a little upset, but turned to leave when I said to him ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he said yes, so we talked about what had happened last night. He seemed glad to get it off his chest, but anyway when he was going to leave he started acting all terrified again and didn’t want to go out into the hall, so I said ‘Why don’t you sleep in here, just make sure you’re gone before Mical wakes up.’ He seemed happy and left to get his stuff and when he came back he came back with the whole crew.”

“If I didn’t know you I’d say you weren’t telling the truth, but I know you pretty well.” Casandra let out a giggle that she was trying to suppress;
Mical laughed at her for it. “Well, I guess we’re going to have to destroy that motherly instinct so that this doesn’t happen again, right?”

They both laughed at that. Casandra then said to Mical, “Speaking of motherly instincts, I have something to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I,” she paused. “I might be pregnant.”

Mical was drinking a glass of water and coughed it up when he heard.
“Really?”

“Yeah, my boobs have been hurting and’ve been really sensitive lately and I’ve been using the toilet more often. But I have thrown up yet, so I don’t know for sure, and Morning Sickness usually comes with being pregnant.”
Mical was excited and alarmed at the same time. He was overjoyed that he was going to be a father, but he was worried that he or Casandra wouldn’t live that long with the alien. He hid his worry from Casandra and the two of them spent the rest of the night talking about what parenthood would be like.

The next day, the crew all met in the bridge. Mical told Evy to play the tape from the cameras in the hall where the creature was. He said to the crew, “Just like before, I want you all to watch the tape closely and see if you can see where the alien went. Okay? Good, Evy, play the recording.”
Everyone looked at the screen as Evy played the tape. The screen was just a swirling torrent of green gas; no one could see anything. When the tape finished Mical had Evy run it again, and again, but no one was anything but green.

“Okay everyone, you can return to whatever it was you were doing, but I don’t want any of you to go anywhere without someone else with you. Calli I need to talk to you and Casandra alright?” She nodded and stayed behind as everyone else left, but Mical and Casandra.

“Okay Calli, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to bring the robot out to the door that leads to the hall where the alien was. Then Evy will take over and go in there and try and find the alien.”

“Don’t we have to worry about the alien breaking the robot. I mean that alien has skin that isn’t penetrable.”

“We don’t need to worry about that Casandra, Evy’s bot it just as impenetrable. She is extremely fast; I did a test the other night and she can catch a bullet.”

Mical whistled. “That’s pretty fast, but anyway, that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll meet you at the door in one hour. Got it?” Calli nodded and Mical said, “Okay,” then he and Casandra left to go back to their room to get an hour’s worth of sleep.

Evy woke up Mical and Casandra when the hour was up; they slept in their clothes so they didn’t need to get dressed. They went out to meet Calli, Evy and as it turned out, the rest of the crew.

When they arrived they asked Calli if everything was ready. She said that it was. Mical then said to Evy, “Okay, Evy, when you go in there search everything carefully, and make sure everything you see is recorded, okay? Oh and is there a way that we could see what you’re looking at while you’re looking at it?”

“Yes there is Captain.” Just then a screen came down through ceiling.

“You can watch on this,” she pointed.

“Okay, everybody back up, before Evy can open the door, so if there is anything right there it won’t kill you.” They all backed up about fifty feet or so, and then Evy opened the door. She walked through, then turned and closed the door behind her.

“Alright, Captain, I’m through. You may proceed to the door.” The group
came forward and watched the screen as Evy walked down the hall. At first there was a small trail of blood away from where Eomett’s body had been.

The fact that the body was missing didn’t catch everyone’s mind until Cathy mentioned it. “Evy, I want you to follow that blood trail and find his body,” Mical said. Evy acknowledged it and continued. The trail grew faint was she walked farther down the hall, until it altogether disappeared.
Evy started looking around so the others could see what the area looked like. She was at an intersection in the halls. As the screen was gliding around the room, something caught Mical’s eye. “Evy stop; turn to your right. Right there on the corner of the wall are those claw marks?” Evy walked toward the corner Mical had indicated.

The corner had five small gouges in it. The shiny metal underneath the white paint was almost unseeable. “Yes they are Captain; should I go this way then?” She indicated toward the hall that led toward the middle of the ship.

“Yes, and watch for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Yes Sir.”

After several hours of searching that hall way, Mical finally said, “Evy, come back it’s late and it doesn’t look like we’re going to find anything.”
“Alright Captain, I should be there in about twenty minutes; it’s a long walk back.”

“Alright, see when you get here then.”

Evy retraced her steps down the long halls; she approached the intersection where the claw marks had been. In the middle of the junction, there was a small pool of blood. She notified Mical and he said to enter the intersection carefully. She slowly put her foot out in the middle and then her whole body. She looked around; there was nothing. She stooped down to examine the small pool.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, something jumped on her back and sent her face first into the floor. She rolled over quickly and alien on top of her. It tried to claw at her, but Evy caught its arms. It then used its mouth to try and bite her head.

She kicked it with her foot and sent it flying upward. It hit the ceiling then fell back down. Evy jumped out of the way as it landed where she had been lying. It gathered itself up and lunged for Evy. She put up her arms to block it, but it sliced through her outer arm as though it were nothing but air. Evy kicked it again and sent it backward a few feet. Evy then charged it with all intentions of putting it through the wall, but the creature lunged for her upper half.

It caught her off guard and she fell backward. The alien’s head came down
as fast as lightning to bite into Evy’s head again, but Evy was just a little bit faster. She shoved her attached arm into its mouth with enough force behind it to stop a moving train. Her fist hit the roof of its mouth and broke through the cartilage easily. It then continued up through its brain, coming to a stop only at the skin.

The alien went limp. Evy got up, grabbed her broken arm and the tale of the alien, so she could bring it back to be studied by Ramxe. She put her broken arm to the magnetic patch that Calli installed on her back. Then she started to walk away, when something caught her eye again; up on the wall was another alien.

Evy, without thinking twice, took the dead alien that was in her hand and swung it around like a baseball bat. The dead alien’s head made contact with the others head. There was a loud cracking noise and skin on the live alien cracked and shattered. Pieces of the alien head went flying in all directions. A few pieces stuck into Evy, the hall walls, and the pierced the alien skin. Evy, not quite realizing the extent of her discovery, picked up the other body and brought both to the door.

Mical opened the door and let her through. She looked at Ramxe and said, “Do you want me to put these in Sick Bay so you can examine them?” Ramxe told her yes, and then Evy looked at Calli and said, “You’re going to have to fix that arm for me.” Calli said okay and then Evy proceeded to Sick Bay. Everyone followed Ramxe and Evy to Sick Bay, except Calli who had to get some tools to fix Evy’s arm.

Evy set the bodies down on the examining tables. Ramxe brought over the tools she needed to do an autopsy. She took her scalpel and tried to cut the alien’s skin, but the blade just slid over the skin and didn’t scratch it. She then took her scalpel and went to the spot where the skin had shattered and cut into the brain material; it was as easy to cut as if she had cut a sponge.

“Odd,” she said as she again tried to cut the skin, but failing again. She straightened up and thought for a few minutes. She said, “I wonder,” and walked over to Evy. She grabbed a piece of the alien’s skin that had been stuck in Evy. She then walked back over to the alien. She put the sharp blade-like side of it against the skin and slid it backward. It cut through the skin easily.

Ramxe said, “Would you look at that. It would seem that the only thing that can penetrate it is its own skin.” She finished cutting the length of it and peeled back the skin. She switched back to her scalpel and cut into the orange flesh. “There e no veins to carry blood, and there doesn’t appear to have any sort of reproductive organs.”

Everyone was shocked at that. “What?! Then how was it able to reproduce?” Casandra asked as she pointed to the other alien lying lifeless on the table.

“I don’t know; and it doesn’t make any sense to me either. Every living
organism that I know of have some sort of reproduction organ, but these…” she trailed off.

Evy seemed to be thinking because there was a low humming coming from the speakers and she was staring at the wall. After a minute or so she looked over at Mical with a worried look. “Captain? I know this may sound preposterous, but this isn’t the same alien from the corridor.”

“How do you know that?”

“The alien in the hall was, as I recall, about six feet in height, and these as far as I can tell are only about five and a half.”

Mical put his hand over his eyes and cursed. “Alright, we’re going to maintain yellow-code and we are going to keep looking for this thing.” He paused for a second then added, “Everyone I think that we better leave Ramxe to her work and Calli, you need to fix Evy’s arm.” Everyone walked out of Sick Bay. Calli took Evy to her room to fix her, most everyone else went to the Meat Hall, as they called it, for supper, and Mical and Casandra went to their bedroom.

The next several days went by and nothing happened. Evy carried out her daily searches of the blocked off half of the ship, but she never did find another sign of the alien or Eomett’s body. Ramxe’s study of to aliens revealed little, except that their skin once peeled off and stretched out would dry into smooth sheets that were just as hard as they had been on the alien, but they could still be cut by the alien-skin knife Ramxe had.
After a brief talk with Ramxe, Mical and Casandra again retreated to their room. Mical flopped down on the bed and put his elbow over his eyes and said, “What are we going to do?” to Casandra as she closed the door.
“You ask me that every night, but I still have the same answer, I don’t know.”

Mical said, “You’re right, we need to talk about something else. Do you have any suggestions?”

Casandra sat down on his leg and put her hand on his chest. “I have something that might lead to a conversation.”

“And what’s that?”

“I had it.”

“Had what?”

“My period stupid,” she said jokingly.

“So you’re not pregnant?” he said sounding a little disappointed.

“No, but you want to know what the good thing about that is?” Mical said sure and Casandra told him. “We get to keep trying,” she said as she kissed him.

“Oh, I like that idea,” Mical replied as he returned her kiss.

Someone knocked on the door and Mical stopped kissing Casandra and yelled, “What is it; we’re kinda in the middle of something?”

“You better come look at this,” came Cathy’s distressed voice.

“What is it,” Mical and Casandra said together.

“I’m not exactly sure, but you better come look anyway.”

Mical reluctantly said to Casandra, “This’ll have to wait, Love.” Then to Cathy he said, “Be right out.” Casandra got up off of him and he stood up; he turned to her, “Are you coming or are you going to stay here?”

“I think I’ll stay here and get ready for when you come back.”

“You’re not letting this go are you?”

“Nope,” she said with a grin. “You better get out there and find out what she wants.”

“I guess so, bye.” He leaned down and kissed her then walked outside.

Cathy was standing there and he asked her, “What was it that so important that you need to show me?”

She said to him, “It’s in the bridge.” They started for the bridge. “I was bored and had nothing to do so I asked Evy to do a search on old legends about aliens and unknown beings and I think one of them matches our alien.”

“Well good, maybe it’ll tell us how to kill it.”

“From what I read it isn’t very good at all.”

“What did you read about it?”

“Well on the planet Kroneff there’s an old legend of a creature that fell from space and attacked a Kroneffian. The creature then dragged the Kroneffian away and he was never seen again. The alien started appearing everywhere ant one side of a village then the other in a matter of seconds, they would kill people and drag away the bodies. In one night alone there were over a thousand people missing from across the whole planet.”

“Wait how did they know it was from all across the planet?” Mical asked.

“Well Kroneff is a very small planet, about half the size of what used to be Earth’s moon; but as I was saying, a thousand people disappeared in one night from across the whole planet. The Kroneffians aren’t that intelligent, but they started thinking that one creature couldn’t take that many people all at once, so they started paying closer to details and that alone brought them along way.

“They discovered that it was more than just one creature they figured that there were at least five hundred of them across the planet. A few of the men from each village got together and decided to follow one of the creatures to see where they were taking the bodies, so one night they staked out a house and waited. Eventually one of the aliens came and attacked the person that was living in the house.”

“They just let it attack the person, they didn’t do anything?”

“From what I read they regretted it but knew that it was necessary to leave the alien alone. Anyway, they followed it for a few miles to this big cave. The cave was called the Center Darkness, because it went to the core of the planet to a big cavern and from the cavern it spread to hundreds of tunnels that led to the surface.”

“But isn’t the center of the planet molten magma?”

“Well in most cases yes, but since Kroneff is such a small planet, its core has cooled and it was during the cooling process, that the inner-planetary caves were created. Ah, here we are.” They walked into the bridge and over to Cathy’s seat. She had a screen up with the information she had just told Mical on it. “You can read it if you’d like, I’ve only gotten as far as the next few paragraphs.”

“Why don’t you just sum up what you’ve read for me?”

“Alright. After they entered the cave and followed it down into the depths of the planet, they came across discarded egg shells, like a chicken’s, only much larger. They then continued after the alien, and neared the center cavern. They approached cautiously and peeked around the corner. What they saw was a bunch of the aliens, they all looked the same as far as they could see and they again started to wonder how they could reproduce; and then they saw ‘her’.

“In the middle of the cavern was an alien, she was bigger than the rest height. It wasn’t the sight of her that frightened the Kroneffs; it was the sight of what she was doing. She was laying eggs as she walked around the cavern; whenever she needed to she’d squat down and pop one out. There were other aliens that were kind of like nurses, they gathered the eggs together, watched them, and incubated them.

“Fearing for their lives the Kroneffs fled back up the tunnel and out onto the land. The chiefs of the village gathered together to discuss what they’d do about the aliens. They decided that they’d go to war against them. The Kroneffs called together all the species on the planet to help them fight because the aliens were a threat to everyone. The most important species there were the Tivonca. They were massive creatures with extreme power. They coupled with the Kroneffs, which had discovered exactly what we discovered about the alien skin, killed every last alien on the planet.

“When humans first made contact with the Kroneffs, seven hundred years ago, they told us these old stories and stuff and we didn’t believe them so their stories were changes to legends and no one give much thought about the reality of a legend,” Cathy said as she finished.

“So we’ve known about this for seven hundred years and no one has done
anything?”

“Yeah, but everyone just thought that it was a legend.”

“Well obviously it wasn’t, was it?”

“No it wasn’t. You known these aliens are kind of like ants in their behavior, aren’t they?”

“How so?”

“Well how the queen lays eggs and then other ants take care of it until it’s grown, kind of like that. It’s also kind of like a bee to.”

“Yeah, but right now we have bigger problems. We have to find this ‘Queen’ and kill her before she lays any more eggs, even though chances are that she already has. Here’s what we’re going d-.”

“Captain, we’ve just received a distress signal from a small craft!”

“Where from?” asked Mical as he walked over to Vomer’s seat.

“I don’t really know, it coming from all around.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything was all quite them, boom, it came from every direction; like it came from hyper-space or something.”

“Maybe it did. See it you can find anything traveling through space at anything higher than L2.”

“Yes sir.” Vomer quickly went to work and for several minutes was looking over readings that the Evelyn was giving out. “Got it; it’s coming from the right from a landing-craft that’s traveling L6 right now. It’s about to come out of hyper-space five miles to our right.”

“What that’s too fast it’ll hit square on. Evy I want everyone on this bridge now! Vomer I want this ship moved.”

“I’ve been trying sir, but it takes a while for the engines to heat up enough.”

Casandra was getting out of the shower when Evy told her to get to the bridge. She hurried and put her regular clothes on and ran out into the hall and started for the bridge. As she was going she could hear, and feel, the engines firing up; she wondered what that was for. When she gotten no more than two hundred feet from her and Mical’s room, Evy blared
“Collision Alert! Collision Alert!”

Suddenly there was the earsplitting noise of a ship leaving hyper-space and then everything went silent. Casandra, without thinking about it, yelled, “Evy disengage Artificial Gravity!” Before Evy could comply there was a deafening sound as the small spacecraft collided with the Evelyn. Casandra went flying into the wall from the impact; her head hit it and she went out like a light.

OOC: I hadn't originally intend to have this available to younger age groups, so it might be alittle, well I'm sure you've figured it out. I tried to edit the really bad parts, but I probably missed a few things.