Rust'N'Blood

"This is an SOS distress call from the mining ship Blue Dwarf. I am Holly, the ship's computer. The crew are alive and well, having been placing into stasis to survive a radiation leak. Now, three million years later, after being revived from stasis, we are struggling to survive. We’re running low on supplies such as clothing, medical, and food. Including those little packets of restaurant ketchup no one can ever open."

* * *

<Snip>
“Thanks for using this JMC emergency stasis pod. Your onboard computer Holly will wake you when it is safe to do so. Sweet dreams.”
<End Snip>

Davie blinked wearily, dizzily as the stasis chamber slowly woke him up. As neared consciousness, strange and cryptic dreams floated through his head. For the most part he felt calm, as though he’d only been asleep and had forgotten of his troubles. The nearer he drew to consciousness, though, the more he remembered, and the less calm he felt.
He was jolted awake by a sudden thump against the glass in front of his face. He tensed, and his eyes widened as he saw a bloody human face in front of him, yelling for help in panic before the person disappeared from sight. Davie pressed his own face against the glass and looked outwards, peering from side to side. The door slid open, and Davie gripped the pistol that he’d took into stasis with him, drawing it from it’s holster at his side. Fortunately, he’d had time to grab a few pieces of essential equipment from a munitions cabinet before the radiation forced him and the rest of the crew into stasis. He had on him an ourroboros flashlight, the pistol, a combat knife, and about two hundred spare rounds.
He stepped out cautiously with his gun held outwards. The air was musty, and most of the lights were out. Sheets of dust covered the ground and the walls, and rust crunched on the metal floor beneath his feet. He looked around, slowly moving outwards, searching for the man. “Morning Dave.” Holly’s voice came drifting from a nearby intercom speaker. Davie held the barrel of his gun tilted slightly downwards in front of his chest and continued to walk slowly around, looking out into the darkness. “Holly is it safe?” Davie asked, continuing to look around. “What do you mean?”
“Has the radiation gone?”
“Oh yes. Radiation is finally back to safe levels.”
“Okay, so is it safe?” he asked, still unsure if the man he saw was a hallucination caused by the stasis, or if it was real. “That's a separate question.” Holly answered. “So wait, Hol? Are you trying to tell me that everybody’s dead?”
“Sorry?”
“Oh, wait, wrong ship.”
Davie turned back to his stasis pod a noticed blood smeared across the glass window. “Um, Holly?”
“Yes Dave?”
“What did you mean that ‘is it safe’ is a separate question?”
“Well--”
Davie heard a scream to his left and Holly cut off. “Never mind I think I got the point!” Davie shouted as he broke into a run in the direction of the screams, pulling the flashlight from a pocket in his combat jacket. He held it upside down in his left hand and balanced the wrist of his right hand on top of the left so that the light would point in the direction of the gun barrel.
He rounded a corner and sped through a door way and out into a corridor. Across from him was a hole straight through the thick metal sheeting of the wall, exposing a large ventilation shaft the size of a bus in height and diameter. Across the room in the far corner, a creature, at least seven foot tall, with a massive claw for it’s left hand, pinned a man to the ground. It raised it’s claw into the air to deliver a fatal blow. Davie took aim and pulled the trigger.
The rounds struck the creature in the shoulders, penetrating it’s thick skin. I rounded on Davie and roared. He fired again as it begun to sprint towards him at high speed. It leapt high into the air towards him, and he dropped to the ground, rolling towards it. It landed with a heavy thump on the ground and Davie straightened up. The creature was now between him an the exit and it growled viciously at him. The bloody man propped himself up against the wall.
Davie shown the light in it’s eyes and aimed for it’s head and neck. The creature lowered itself and charged again. Davie squeezed the trigger, missing the creature as in mid rush a huge spear was thrown through it’s right arm from a smaller ventilation shaft high up in the room. The creature yelped in pain as the spear pinned it to the wall of the shaft. It looked up in unison with Davie to see the a shadowy form of an equally large creature. The first creature snarled and jerked itself from loose the wall as the second creature leapt from it’s perch high up in the vent shaft.
The second creature was caught in Davie’s light for a moment to reveal a bipedal reptilian, covered with all manner of weaponry, consisting mostly of edged weapons. The creatures clashed with ferocious strength. Davie spun and hauled the man off the floor, slinging him over his own back so that he could still shoot. The reptilian pinned the other creature to the ground, and raised a large scimitar into the air to deliver a finishing strike, only to be smacked in the chest by the first creature’s massive claw. The reptilian sprawled backwards and rolled. The two beasts came to their feet simultaneously and rushed each other, hissing, clashing, and shouting.
Davie ran past them and through the jagged hole in the shaft, carrying the bloody man on his back. He ran back towards the Stasis Bay, leaving himself only to contemplate who the victor of the battle would be: the reptilian hunter, or the distinctly inhuman beast?
Davie laid the man on the floor and turned to manually seal the door. “Medic!” he shouted to the marines on the other side of the stasis bay. They came running and as the thick door fell closed. The medic dropped to the floor next to him and began to go to work on the man, patching his wounds and giving him a dose of anesthetic. “What’s you name? Alfredo, right?”
Alfredo groaned. “Si. Gracias por salvarme la vida. Thank you!”
Davie nodded. “Okay, re-enforce this door with whatever you can find and set guards around the other entrances! There’s some freaky stuff out there and believe me you don’t want it in here!”
The marines moved about, blocking up the doors. Davie stepped over to Holly’s wall mounted screen. “Alright Hol, start talking.”
“About what?”
Davie reloaded his pistol. “About this and in this order: How long have we been in stasis, what were those things out there, what else is on board, how badly is the ship damaged, and how long till everyone else is all out of stasis?”
“Well, Dave, I’m not sure I should tell you all that. You might panic.”
“I won’t panic so long as I know what’s going on.”
“The other’s might panic.”
“Just answer before I start pulling circuits.”
Holly projected the words ‘Don’t Panic.’ In large friendly letters beneath his face on the screen and nodded for Davie to lean closer. “You’ve been in stasis for the last three million years.”
“What!?” Davie said, his voice slightly raised.
“SSHH!” Holly stopped him.
“What!?” he whispered harshly.
“Well the radiation had to dissipate, didn’t it? In answer to second question, the one with the spear was a warrior from a race of lizard people that evolved from one of the crew’s pregnant pets over the last three million years, and the one with the claw…well I’m not sure what that one was. My sensors are still down in most places.”
“Lizard people?”
“Yeah, they’re actually quite friendly once they get to know you. They live in what used to be the arboretum. They’ve converted it into a tropical climate, and have a diverse social and political culture. They have philosophers, warriors, writers—everything that humans have. They’ve built a city in there, and they use giant beasts of burden evolved from a form of tomato. They also--”
“Tell me later, get on with the answers.”
“Oh, right. I’m not quite sure what else is out there, like I said most of my sensors have gone down.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“Well, I know that a group of Simulants has made a home in the promenade, and they’re at war with the lizard people. There is also a race of fish people who’ve evolved and made me their king.”
Holly took on a smug grin, bobbing his head, and for the first time Davie noticed the little crown on his head.
“You feeling alright, Hol?” Davie said, slightly worried that this behavior was unusual even for Holly. “Well it’s been three million years. I think I’ve gone a bit peculiar to tell you the truth.”
Davie sighed. “Continue?”
“Well that’s about all I know about what else there is, aside from the odds and ends. Moving on, I couldn’t give you a strong report on how badly we’re hurt, my sensors are down.”
“I know, you mentioned it. What about the scutters?”
“Rebelled.”
“What?”
“Yeah, they’ve taken over every cinema on the ship and have hoarded the entire collection of John Wayne apparel. The Drives out, so we haven’t done anything but drift for the last three million years.”
“And the crew?”
“About an hour before everyone’s out.”
Davie looked off with his hands on his hips. He chuckled. “Fan-smegging-tastic….”
<Tag!>
<OOC – I had the idea for the fish people from Mike’s version of ‘Back to Earth’. They’re…more or les right out of the. The story almost matches up, so I thought ‘Why not?’ and put ‘em in. Although if you guys have any objections we need notmention them again. :)>