She stared at him with those beady eyes, seemingly taking in the fact that a living, breathing, walking and talking human stood before her. The excitement glittering in her eyes was almost palpable as she spoke again "A-Are you... Human?" and soon he saw her face morph into one that seemed to denote self-deprecation, as if she'd asked something stupid and was berating herself.

"Yeah...?" He nodded, slowly "I am."

"Good!" She clapped her weird hands together, her smile returning, "Very good! I am happy to hear!"

"Right... Listen... Uhm..." He scratched the back of his head, bemused, "I've got a lot of questions, if ya don't mind."

She nodded rapidly. The boy hummed, then asked "Okay... First of all, where am I?"

"Aboard archaeological ship TRS Cygni." The girl replied, "Orbiting the remains of your homeworld."

Well. That. Uh. Huh.

He actually needed a few moments to process that one, staring with disbelief at the alien girl that had so trivially stated the simple, yet horrifying truth. He had seen Earth go up in literal flames seconds before his death, so it really should not have been a surprise that what was left of the planet was probably only mere 'remains'. He blinked, then nodded slowly, "Okay..." as his mind settled on the matter. He had witnessed it die, alongside his people. Damned be the entities that did this.

"I understand if you require a few more moments to process this." She stated quickly and concisely, as if reciting a poem or a story she'd memorized, "I also offer my deepest condolences and those of the Federation of Tyras for the loss of your planet."

He sighed, "I presume that's your little space nation?"

"Yes!" She beamed, then whispered to herself in English, "My hypothesis was correct! Humans are fairly clever!"

"Uh-huh." He slowly nodded again. Well, this certainly changed a few things, chief among which the fact that he was actually staring face-to-face with perhaps what was mankind real-life First Contact. He gazed around at the hold, figuring slowly that much of the stuff stuck in the multitude of boxes was probably whatever remnants they could dig out of Earth's crust after it (probably) shattered, then he let out a deep, annoyed sigh. He looked to the girl again and asked, "Any specific reason your ship's over me homeworld?"

She stared back at him, seemingly trying to find the right words in her presumably-limited English vocabulary to enunciate their objective. Slowly, softly, she said "We were looking for remnants of the civilization that inhabited this planet. Information, architecture, art, whatever we could recover to catalogue your people's history so that it is not lost to the void. Fairly interesting history, may I say!"

"Ah. And, uh... Seeing as you speak English a tinge better than I do, you must've found plenty of good info." He stated.

She beamed, nodding rapidly, "Yes! Pieces of your technology were recovered, which allowed us to synthesize and understand what seems to be the most commonly-spoken international language. I am currently utilizing a specialized translator to speak it. We also learned about the fact that your planet was not unified. Why is that?"

"A bit too many differences to actually have us properly gettin' along..." He stated rather bluntly, garnering a look of surprise out of the girl. "What about me, then? The hell am I doing aboard your ship in what I assumed to be some form of bloody suspended animation?" His mind had managed to untangle much of the situation of this ship, sans his presence here and the presence of that one hunter-killer robot.

"You were brought aboard by one of our scanner drones. It found your body floating amid ruins, perfectly preserved." She answered simply, "We were pleasantly surprised to find out you were not damaged by your prolonged stay in the vacuum."

"Damn... Lucky break, huh?" He asked almost sarcastically. He knew the Guardian had had something to do with his discovery, plus it probably plucked his soul from his body to not let it die in there. And so they could speak. That'd be a wild story to tell anyone at this point, that he spoke with some godforsaken Space entity. Could've even been a very strange dream too, for all he knew, caused by the loss of oxygen to his brain. Though... "In what state was I when you found me, anyways?"

"Like I said, perfectly preserved. Even your brain showed signs of activity, though very minor... At least until now." She stated.

"Okay? Fair enough." He rubbed his eyes. Christ, this situation was turning even more crazy the more he learned of it. He wanted to scream out into the uncaring void, to hear his voice die out with his own folk. But he couldn't. Not right now, anyways. The ship he was on would probably not allow anyone to exit. Not at the moment, anyways. He felt like he had to find another way off... Find the Guardian's agent.

"So. My name is Naya. Naya Karon and I'm the chief archaeologist of the Cygni. Do you have a name, human?" She asked with a jovial, relaxed tone, taking the boy out of his short stint of thinking how badly his situation had deteriorated.

"Huh? Oh. Right, manners. Name's Jacob. Jacob McLelan. Nice to meet you." He said. The girl smiled, despite him remaining rather uncharacteristically straight-faced. She wanted to pipe up, to speak again and ask what was bothering him, but she heard skittering behind the bulkhead. With a gasp, she ran, grabbed the boy by the wrist and dragged him back behind the boxes, crouching to hide herself and him from the oncoming threat.

He looked to her, raising a brow, then he whispered, "Another bot?"

"I believe it is the same one..." She whispered back, moving to draw her pistol.

"The hell are these things doing here? What even are they?!" He demanded, watching as the door began to slide open.

She gazed to him, fearful as she told him, "Shae'ra-class security drones. They were meant to be the guards for our expedition. Something had driven them insane when I was last awake, however. I barely managed to get away from a squad of three when I entered cryosleep..." and the boy had just been hit with the idea that there was more than one of these freaking things.

She showed him to be quiet as the door creaked, only partly opened. The war-machine scurried inside, the visual sensor suite scanning every inch of the cargo hold as it scuttled around, pushing boxes out of the way and spilling their contents out as it knocked them over. One box it had knocked over spilled out a dozen pieces of metal of different shapes, some small, some big. Alongside them were even smaller boxes that broke open, spilling brass and lead on the floor.

Guns and bullets. He looked over to her and asked "What the fuck are firearms doin' here?!"

"That's what those were?" She raised the metaphorical brow at him.

"Yes!"

"Curious... We settled them here, alongside every other artifact we could recover from our expedition. My assistant believed the drones found them in some sort of complex. You think they can be used?" She asked. He nodded weakly, though he knew jack about using a gun. He'd lived in Ireland for his whole life. One trip to the US, to one of their shooting ranges, had been useful in teaching him the basic firearm safety rules, but he was not a crack shot in any sense.

It turned, the antennae on its front seemingly twitching. It turned to face the bunch of boxes they hid behind and the boy swore to himself as he ducked farther behind them and pulled the girl closer. A whirr echoed from the six-legged spider-bot, followed by a warning. The air started tasting like ozone all of a sudden.

He gasped, seeing a peek of the light in the barrel of that thing's weapon growing brighter. He pushed the girl out of the way and jumped opposite of her as a scarlet laser beam vaporized chunks of the box stack they hid behind, tracking him. The beam cut into the floor, leaving a melted grate about the size of Jacob's head a few feet behind him. The machine seemed to glare at him with killer intent, its visual sensors twisting, turning and focusing onto him.

The laser weapon discharged the heat from its sinks in four gusts of steam, then began to charge again with a similar, sharp whirr as before. He gasped, staggered and clambered back onto his feet, running toward the bulkhead door. The weapon discharged again as the bot tracked him. Narrowly, it missed his waist, damn near ready to vivisect him.

He heard the sharp hiss of a discharging small-arm and saw two blasts of blue light strike the machine in its exposed rear, staggering it and causing its weapon to cease firing as a translucent barrier around its hull shimmered. He looked to see Naya. She'd drawn and fired her pistol, despite what he would assume was fear in her eyes. She cried "Take one of your weapons!" and slid the closest to him with her foot.

He doubled over, nodding and scrambling. He grabbed the weapon, a black frame with plastic furniture and a thirty-round magazine, before rolling himself into cover. He pulled out the magazine of the firearm and was taken aback by the sight of it being loaded. He yelled "These things have ammo!"

"Are they not supposed to?!" The girl asked, then yelped and cove for cover behind the boy's cryopod as another energy beam cut through the floor where she had been.

"No! You're supposed to bloody unload them!" He shot back, "Ah, what the hell, it's a bit of a life saver!" and he slotted the magazine back and racked the bolt. The weapon was an Kalashnikov platform of some design or other. He wasn't much into guns, as mentioned before, but he at least knew the standard 'bad guy gun' in most movies and games.

Hefting the weapon over cover and pressing it against his shoulder, the boy looked barely down the sights and squeezed, letting loose a short burst of three bullets that either skimmed off the target's armored plates or went wide. He stared, now, down the barrel of the thing's laser cannon, his eyes wide as two more blue beams struck the damn thing but hit some sort of energy field that protected it.

"Fire again!" She yelled. He complied, shouldering the weapon proper and squeezing off. Six rounds left the barrel of the gun, this time more under control, but still with rather poor grouping and a climbing muzzle. They struck across the body of the machine, one nailing a heat sink off the droid's side and causing all three of its eyes to turn red as they blared with warnings. The plating on top of the thing took some damage as well, though it seemed superficial.

"This isn't good..." He murmured to himself, firing again.

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Several more rounds bounced off of the top plating. He was firing at too high an angle for any penetration to occur, but he was still trying to control the weapon. He swore to himself, switching the weapon to semi-automatic by mistake and figuring it out only as single shots came out from the barrel. It was more controllable at least.

The Machine was having none of it, though. It bull-rushed him, slamming into him hard enough to knock the weapon out of his arms before it pinned him to the floor. The beady, robotic 'eyes' in its sensor suite stared at him with hatred while his newly-acquired comrade by circumstance fired her energy pistol into the damn thing's side. The shots didn't make it through the shield, but it did seem to be weakening. Not quickly enough, however, as the thing stood on its hind legs and readied itself to slam down the other four onto the boy.

Naya gasped, "Jacob! MOVE!"

As time seemed to slow around him, he watched the machine's form coming down with the four free limbs it had. He had no weapon, he was stuck between a rock and a hard place and was about to actually, properly die. His heart rate rose sharply, beating into his ears as even the snap-hiss-crackle of the girl's laser pistol and her pleas for him to dodge became nothing but background noise.

He braced, closing his eyes shut and waiting fearfully for his end to come as the machine's four hardened metal limbs descended. If this was to be the end, honestly, after surviving his own homeworld's destruction, it was the worst one he could imagine. He had just met Alien life, though, so he took some solace in knowing mankind was not alone. Nor was it without 'Gods' watching over it in its final moments.

The blow never came, however. Instead, a sharp, high-pitched noise snapped the boy out of his momentary death trance. He looked to see the machine's shield shatter, a green, teardrop-shaped projectile of burning energy slamming into its side and melting off one of its legs and a chunk of its armor. The droid collapsed in front of the boy, who went to trace the origin of the energy weapon discharge, but found nothing aside from the wall near the bulkhead door.

"Wh... What was that?" He asked, his voice cracking.

Naya holstered her pistol as she breathed a sigh of relief, then said "A plasma weapon..." And approached the damaged machine to give it a once-over. A clear-cut blast that tore a hole through the thing's midsection was visible. Fried circuitry, melted metal and fused-together parts were the only thing left of the bot's central processing unit. Now that Jacob had had a better look at it... Well, it was about twice the length and width of a human being, legs and all. The same height as well.

"Did you get to see the shooter...?" He stood to his feet, going to grab the firearm off the floor. He slung it onto his shoulder by a plastic strap, looking to the girl. She shook her head. Of course she hadn't, how could she? It wasn't exactly obvious that the person who fired that energy weapon had to have been in the room, at the very least.

"Are you well?" She asked, looking to him.

"Disregarding the entire clusterfuck going on around me... Aye..." He nodded, despite most of the color that had drained from his face. Both of them let out sighs of relief, feeling the tension leave their bodies. She holstered her weapon while the boy slung the rifle over onto his shoulder, turning to grab ammunition. He asked "Seriously, did you folks not scan these things before pickin'em up?"

"Many of us have never seen chemical-based projectile armaments before, plasma weaponry notwithstanding." She answered, "We mostly use energy weapons, as you saw."

"Clearly, since that bot's shields didn't stop bullets." He stated absentmindedly, loading a couple of extra magazines which he shoved into the pockets of his jacket, "Any more of them?"

"About two dozen more, I believe." She replied, "Why?"

"Well... Does your ship have some sorta comms system? Y'know, a radio or somethin'." He asked. She nodded.

"The communications relay is within the heart of the ship, next to the sensor data core."

"Suggesting the comms relay proper because ya think the droids're all over the bridge, right?" He figured. She nodded, smiling.

"You have fairly decent deductive skills, Jacob."

He turned, giving a weak smile to the girl, "Oughta be a bit sharp if yer raised in Ireland's bad parts, honestly."

She seemed confused, "'Sharp'? You aren't a cutting tool of any kind."

"It's..." He sighed. Aliens, right. Translators or not, he had to explain turns-of-phrase in English. "It's a saying. It means having good deductive skills."

He saw her eyes light up for a moment, that infectious smile reappearing.

He looked back to the box containing guns and picked out a sidearm from in there, extending the small weapon to the girl and asking "You got a way to track where the bots are?"

"I'm afraid not. Not unless we get to the bridge or the Mainframe... And both are definitely going to be guarded." She stated, taking the ergonomically-poor-for-aliens pistol into her hand and looking it over. It seemed similar in design to her own, but it had a dark-grey frame with rubber grips and a detachable magazine. The boy handed her three more, seemingly loaded magazines from within the box.

"Okay... Quick training on how to use a pistol." He started, taking the handgun away. He pointed at the button on the side of the weapon and said, "This is your mag ejector. You press it and pull out the magazine from the grip, load in a fresh one. When it's out of ammo, the pistol's slide will lock back. You pull back and it kinda loads a round on its own. Try not to shoot anything but the bots." He stated, handing the weapon back.

"Noted. Perhaps it would be better to go through the vents?" She suggested.

He looked up, to see the very narrow vents in question, then stated "I'm not sure I can fit my fat arse through them, sorry." before looking down, "We just gotta avoid the bots, right? They make plenty of noise, runnin' around..." And he saw her wince. Sighing, he continued "C'mon... Our best bet's to get to that relay and send out some sorta distress signal."

"I will lead the way, then." She stated, raising the pistol.

He hummed, then stated, "I have the bigger gun, Naya. Sure, I'm a shite shot, but it'll be harder still to hit anythin' with you in front... How 'bout you just guide me, aye?"

"Of course."

With that settled, the two moved through the half-open bulkhead and down the massive central corridor of the Starship. Between the two, the only noise within the confines of this gargantuan hall were the sounds of footsteps bouncing off the metal walls and multitude of other bulkheads around. Above some of the doors sat faded green characters from what he assumed was Tyran alphabet.

Each door led to a separate cargo bay area and there was about a dozen of them sitting on both walls to their right and left. The faint hum of the ship's engines echoed once more through the hull and the hull groaned in the distance. The gratings below showed the masses of cables and wiring that flowed throughout the ship.

Making it to the opposite end of the hall, the human boy and alien girl halted as she moved to open the door via its holographic lock display. The boy kept his weapon trained on the back of the hold, watching each door and listening intently for any movement that rang of metal appendages striking metal floors.

The door, half the size of the normal bulkheads, slid open, a quiet cheer coming from the girl to his left. She turned to him and smiled, before readying her pistol. The two stalked forward and out of the cathedral-sized halls of the cargo bay, into more narrow section. She pointed Jacob in the direction they were meant to take and he followed.

They'd turned twice to the right, moving past broken doors and empty rooms as they searched for their objective:An elevator to lead them down to the lower decks of the ship, where the engine room, com relay and sensor suites themselves were. They halted in front of an elevator door, a simple plate of alien alloys sat in a door frame opposite to a half-open, more intricately-decorated door. Past said door, the man could see signs of habitation, a desk, a bed, even an active computer.

"Huh..." He murmured, "Hey, Naya. The hell's this?"

She looked back from her work on summoning the elevator, then said "That would be Captain Jerek's quarters."

"Weren't ya the Chief Archaeologist?" He asked.

"Yes?" She nodded.

"So why's there a different captain?" He raised a brow.

She chuckled, "The Navy runs our expedition vessels. Captain Jerek was the military officer running the ship proper."

"Huh."

Neat.

"I'm gonna go look around for a bit while ya fix that... Scream if any bot pops by." He stated, hefting the assault rifle to his hip. She offered a quick nod before turning back to trying to fix whatever had happened to the elevator proper. He stepped inside, scanning the small room first with his eyes, then sweeping it with his gun, just in case.

He stopped square in the middle of the room itself, looking over the dust that had surprisingly settled. The wardrobe remained open, filled with old clothing, including a jet-black uniform bearing rank markings and pins, he presumed. Above it was a strangely-shaped cap, meant to fit the physiology of the Tyran, he assumed.

Sat on a nightstand by the bed, he saw a picture. A tall, elderly-looking male of the species was standing at attention, left hand on his chest and smiling. Beside him were a young girl and a woman of around his age. All three were the same species as Naya, clearly. He sighed, then murmured "Sorry, pal... Hope yer off the ship at least..."

His mind turned to his own family. To his mum, who was at home probably baking his favorite sweets and to dad, who had gotten leave from the Defense Forces to come see him. He was close to graduatin' his fourth year of Uni. With a sigh, he shook his head and stepped out of the room just as Naya managed to summon the elevator. She smiled at him, a bit more cocky than jovial, then stood up and readied her projectile-based handgun.

"So... Uhm... Can I ask what you did before... All this?" She tried to find the right words, clearly.

He answered calmly "University student. Was studying to become a paramedic."

"... A what?" She seemed dumbfound. He raised a brow.

"Y'all don't have medical personnel?"

"We do... Just not... That."

"... Okay, well, paramedics are the people who work aboard ambulances," He dragged out the word for a bit, noticing the confusion, then continued with a sigh "Which are vehicles that transport the dangerously sick and wounded rapidly to the nearest medical facilty. Y'know, cars, flying vehicles, stuff like that. I'm seriously surprised that yer people didn't drag out any kind of data regarding medical practice from those tech pieces you found."

"That's fair. And we did, just... Not a lot of it." She chuckled awkwardly, "I understand now, though. A very noble endeavor, I must say. Any useful skills that spawned out of that course?"

"Thanks. As for skills, I know how to do CPR and stabilize patients thanks to some practice we did, but that's about all I got so far." He shrugged as the elevator arrived with a ping. The two stepped inside as the doors opened and the girl pressed the button for the deck they needed to go to. He hummed, "Not like it's gonna be much use... Ain't got a bloody clue of your physiology to be of any help if ya wind up wounded."

"I can offer some insights when we return to Tyran space. Our own medical facilities could use someone to train these 'paramedics', I feel, if for nothing else than the more personal touch that machines cannot bring to the table." She smiled. He chuckled. An alien just offered him a job in their own bloody world, probably complete with accomodation and actual citizenship. To replace robots, no less. Hmm.

As much as he'd have loved to, he stated "I'm... Afraid I gotta decline. I got a job to do."

"Oh?" She furrowed her nonexistent brows at him, "What do you mean?"

He looked to her, his face growing serious, an anger-filled scowl, fists clenched to his side, then said with unhindered fury behid every word "I'm gonna find the fuckers that broke my homeworld... And I'm gonna make'em pay for every inch of soil and bedrock they tore out of it. And every person they killed."

The intensity with which the boy seemed to glare, not at her, but rather at his own thoughts, left the girl a bit shocked. She made a mental note that humans did have the concept of vengeance defined enough. Any being with a sense of self and capability to produce thoughts and ideas would clearly have that concept. Even her people did.

She looked to him, then said a meek "I understand..." before turning to face the door of the elevator.

The moment it opened, the pair was greeted by, possibly, the most horrifying sight ever.

Six dead bots lay on the floor, torn apart by brute force or melted by plasma. In the middle of the circle of machine corpses sat a slim, female figure. Black hair flowed like the ebbing darkness of space itself, strands of white through it resembling the stars. She, whoever she was, wore a black armor set that resembled a combination of plate armor and exposed, darkened muscle through which energy seemed to flow. On ther back, attached via what looked to be a magnetic clamp, was an energy rifle, its barrel smouldering with emerald smoke.

An aura of lilac energy surrounded the humanoid being, her gauntlets tipped by what looked to be some sort of amplifiers from which bolts of purple lightning sparked. Behind the holstered energy rifle was what looked to be a spinal support with similar, shimmering amps. Jacob felt, for the first time in his life, the indomitable strength of what seemed to be psychic energy as the very hallway around them seemed to warp. He felt a headache coming.

Breathing a sigh, the being, a girl with porcelain skin let her powers subside, the aura fading away from around her as her hair fell back, reaching around to the waist. Trembling and whimpering behind her took her attention, revealing a beautiful woman, with the face of a model and the figure of an olympic athlete. Two lilac-shimmering eyes stared, overflowing with psychic energy, at the pair of humanoids. She seemed human, alright, but the ears were a dead give-away she wasn't human in any sense of the word.

She raised her head, sizing the two up, then hummed, her stare settling on Jacob as Naya hid behind him.

Jacob suddenly had a very bad feeling about this.