Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 155 of 365. Sol standard year]

Days after of Crash landing/ 3

Uninhabited Island / Clearing of Escape Capsule # 405

Galactic Standard Time / After 0640

Jessie

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Jessie looked at the last few modifications. The first idea had been to create a small, general field to let them pull up the plate. More of a small sphere than a square, something that was small. But the few modifications he had just finished turned it into a pyramid field. It would be as tall or deep as the shield. This way, they would be able to move……no.

He blinked and looked at the shield emitter in shock. They had been so sure that they had the right idea, that they had forgotten to think what would happen. If this made a null gravity field, then how would they move? They would be in a void, with no way to gain momentum. That meant that they needed something else to

but they would need ropes and mag hooks to move around. He could probably make some armor with two lines on launchers. Maybe add some ultrasonic sonar.

But then that wasn’t possible right now. The mag lines were the easy solution, and that was what they needed now. With a sigh, he shook his head and looked at the shield above him. As he looked up at the sun, he tried to keep calm.

“You done man?” Zevortro asked from behind him.

Jessie looked up and sighed, shaking his head as he looked at the crater. “Here, yes. I just have something else to do. Tell Terra I’m heading to the supplies.”

“Okay. Wait, what!?” Zevortro asked as Jessie walked off.

“Just put the generator above the cut piece with the legs we put on it. Remember to turn it on by setting one first when you set it up. That’ll do it,” Jessie said, waving as he walked towards the crater. He ignored anything that Zevortro said as he climbed down, not letting his mind wander. He thought he had seen everything he needed inside, but he might have been wrong. If he was, then the exploration of the thing below them was going to be……. Interesting.

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Zevortro

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Zevortro looked at Jessie as he walked away, at a loss for words. He didn’t understand why Jessie had left, but he was sure it wasn’t good. He thought about everything that he knew, and after a moment he figured out that he was missing something. There was something that he wasn’t seeing, something that they needed. But Jessie had seen it, he had worked it out. That must be where he was going, to make something that would help them!

He almost laughed and then clamped down on his emotions. He had promised that he wouldn’t let anyone know what Jessie was, and he would keep it.

So with that thought, he walked over towards the hole they had made. He looked around at the other crew members and nodded. This would work, and he could see that they were all ready.

Terra looked up and scowled as she saw him. “Where’s Jessie?”

“In the capsule. Said that he needed to do something. Said the generator was ready for use through,” Zel said as he shrugged.

“He what?” Terra asked a shocked tone in her voice. After a moment, Terra just shook her head. “Later. That’s a problem for later. Whatever it is, he’s doing what he has to. So let’s do what we have to do. The cut is ready, the machine is ready. So where’s Dalila?”

Zevortro blinked, and then he remembered why they needed her. “Oh, her? Yeah, I think….”

“Here!” Dalila called out as she and Vivian appeared on both sides of Zevortro.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Zevortro stared at them, shocked a little. He always had prided himself on his sense of hearing, but he hadn’t heard them move. There was something there, he knew it. But what?”

“Good! Get ready to cut in! Bryke, Zevortro! With me! Everyone get ready to turn it on!” Terra called out as she climbed out of the hole. As he fell in behind her, Zevortro watched the two volunteers out of the corner of his eyes. The more he looked at them, the more that something seemed different. Not wrong but not what he expected from civilians.

He looked up and then he winced. “Wait, he said something when he left. Turn on setting one first.”

Terra looked at him and nodded. As she quickly found the control panel, she turned it on. As soon as she did, Zevortro felt the feeling of weightlessness start. Without a word, he grinned and moved with the others to help Terra. But he put too much force into it, and ‘jumped’ five feet past her. As he landed, he looked around and saw some of the other crew members moving away from the generator. “Oh, Sun. This is going to be bad.”

“This. Is. Amazing!” Dalila’s voice said, laughter in her voice.

Looking up, Zevortro saw her and Vivian were both five feet up, and they were still going. He winced as he hoped that was the highest they would go. But they only moved another two feet until they stopped. As they floated there, they started to try and move downward. All he could think of was that they needed to find a way to fix this. It was such an obvious problem in hindsight that he couldn’t……

Zevortro mentally stopped. He blinked and then grinned as everything suddenly made sense. “Oh, that’s why he left.”

“What in the!?” Terra exclaimed, looking at

“Wait, we’re stuck here!?” Vivis asked in horror.

“Hold on!” Zevortro called out as he grabbed the generator. “ I think that Jessie went to get something to fix this! So just stay there and wait!”

“And we can trust this Jessie!?” Dalila demanded from above.

Zevortro was about to say something when they all heard laughter coming from Terra. Looking up, Zevortro saw Terra clutching the generator, hiding her face against it.

She looked up, her face full of mirth. “Trust him? You can trust him to always come at the lost possible time to help! The one man that will always let people think they’re in danger to beat their enemy!”

The more that she talked, the more that Zevortro started to feel that something was wrong. What had the two of them been through?

“But the one thing, the one thing I know!” Terra declared with a smirk. “Is that he will never leave a person hanging too long!”

“Hey, guys? The plates away!” Vivis called out.

Everyone looked to see Vivis pointing to her left. There, floating with her hand around it was the hull plate piece.

“Vivis!? What are you doing??” Terra called out, shocked.

“I wanted to see how heavy it was. But when the gravity went away, I used a knife to move it up! So I’ll just push this towards the crater? No. I’ll move it to the edge of the field!” Vivis called out and moved up out of the hole. Once she was at ground height, she grabbed the edge of the hold and pulled herself to the ground.

“How did you do that?!” Vivian demanded anger in her voice.

“Anti-Gravity Aerobics on the Spirit! I was in the running to be the next instructor before all this!” Vivis called out with a laugh.

A moment later, Jessie appeared. He had a pack on, and he took one look and winced. “Oh dear! I think I messed up a little. But this is unreal.”

“Just help me!” Dalila called out.

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Dalila

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“Right! Everyone else okay!?” Jessie called out and as everyone called out, Dalila looked at him. This was the person who had made a shield generator into an anti-gravity design? That sign she had set at Vivian was going to pay off! When everyone had felt the null gravity field, she had seen a chance to win. The person who did this had to have been a scientist who worked at a Mega Corp! If she could get some data from him, then she could sell it for a good profit! And if the data was of the right sort, then she could maybe even plan a heist!

“No-one? Good! Give me a second! Get ready to catch me!” Jessie called out.

She looked down as Jessie jumped towards them, and she couldn’t believe her luck! With one touch, she would be able to copy any of the data his nanites had! In one shingle motion, she would have a score that would make this crash worth it!

“Here!” She called out as she reached out her hand. As he ‘flew’ closer, she only barely kept from grinning.

“Hey, thanks….. .” Dalila trailed off. She saw the words, ‘Guild Member, action canceled’ flash through her augmented vision. Slowly, she looked up into Jessie’s eyes. Jessie’s ice-cold and steel-hard eyes. “Oh.”

“Yeah. We’ll talk. Later,” Jessie said with a scowl. Then he looked over at Vivian who only stared in shock and horror.

“All three of us will have a nice talk later,” Jessie promised as he pulled off his bag. As it floated there, he pulled out a rope attached to a blunt metal end. Pulling out a sharp piece of metal, he attacked it to the blunt end. Spinning it in a circle, he aimed it at the hole the hull plate had been removed from. With a hard look at her, Jessie growled at Dalila. “You don’t mind working in null gravity until I can get everyone down, don’t you?”

“No. This is fine. Ready to work!” Dalila said with a small shaky smile.

“Good!” Jessie said before he threw the rope. It flew and pierced the ground at the edge of the hole. He looked up and scowled at Dalila before thrusting the other end of the rope at her. “Start climbing!”

As she climbed down, she cursed herself mentally. How could she have not seen the fact that Jessie was one of them?! It explained everything. He must have loaned to modify his own heart to save on money! Or he might have found a way to do this by chance. But she had almost committed a crime against a Guild Member. The only fact that she was willing to testify under Truth nanites would let her keep membership.

As she reached the ground, she dropped. She grabbed the grass and started to pull herself along. She didn’t stop until she reached the hole and then she pulled herself down into it. She heard the cries as Jessie helped the others, and she looked into the opening through the hull. Within it were the wires she was expecting, but they were a strange pink color.

Most species always made the wires for this the color of danger to them, so this was interesting. With a few swift moments, she accessed the system. As her tablet and Apps went to work, she smiled as the code started to form. Whatever was down here, it was still active. That was interesting, and that might make it easier for her. But then she felt her hope die. The code was in a language that she had never seen before. That was the worst thing to happen. If the code was in a different language, then someone would need to break that first. And from what she could see, this was going to be hard. The characters didn’t look like any of the languages that she knew, and that made translating it hard. Without stopping, she tried to see if she could get to a map by trying to open a menu.

But the more she tried to open it, the more she failed. It was almost as if the ship was asleep. “Wait, is it still active? Could this be a diffusion system? The power and internal programming are in different read-only systems? Or is the control system only able to manipulate the data one way?”

She forced herself to keep calm. This was going to be harder than she thought but she could do it. Within the next half hour, she would make this hers.