Act II: Ain't No Rest

Losing Air

JP with Omni, Jaxx, and redsword_7

Jensen breathed a sigh of relief. "Ha, wow great shooting Marshal. I uhhh slipped when that thing jumped at us, and uhhh grabbed you as a reflex. Sorry about that. Thanks for getting in the way. Cool cool..."

Jensen wiped his brow. He wasn't up for this. Aliens bursting out of bodies, sick crew, children! This was a disaster. And now everyone saw him grab Roberts and push him in front of the alien. Maybe they would buy his story about slipping? Sure, why not? He knew he could be very convincing when he needed to be.

Capt. Kenny was shocked like the rest of the crew but stroked his watch and regained his focus. Then he spoke up to the crew, "Good job, Roberts. Now we know a bit more about the parasites. If anyone else has similar symptoms it's already too late.

Jensen noticed his air supply was running out. He quickly looked around the cyro chamber to see if there was anything he could use to recharge his supply.

There was nothing in the Cryochamber that could remedy his problem without pumping in air from the Cronus itself so he looked at the crew of the Cronus "Look, I'm almost out of air! You've been exposed to whatever is in this air. Give me a canister! You don't need it. I'll even take the guy who just had the thing crawl out of it. I'm not picky!" He rushed over to Dr Cooper’s corpse and in his panic, tried to roll him over to remove the air canister getting gore and goo all over him. He dropped to the floor dry heaving. "Help", he said between heaves.

The Captain came over the comms again, “Unfortunately this attack seems to have drained your O2 tanks as we can see by the panic induced company man crawling on the floor like a frat boy after a kegger. Roberts, I hate to say this but you all need to get more air soon if you want to keep breathing. At this rate the Cronus crew can barely walk so you may have to get life support working on the Cronus again."

"Go, Jensen. Cover the outer door," said Roberts. "Can someone get something light to carry this...This thing?

Robert's hands shook as he tried to get the air canister from the dead body.
"Heads up, people, I am sure that creature’s buddies heard that scream and they can come from anywhere if they are that small. Watch the windows, doors, vents. Need everyone back into the corridor again. They are armored and can bite through our suits by the look of those teeth."

He picked up his ammo off the floor and reloaded a slug into the shotgun.
"There may be more air canisters in the back just past the showers, there are two EVA storage areas," said Second Officer Reyes.

"That sounds better this one is covered in blood.", said Roberts.

Vera headed out the aft door and found the Examination Room a mess, there were no body bags or any such things there and the bio-waste container was full of used syringes and other bio-hazardous refuse. The only thing that she found to salvage were two personal medkits.

Continuing into the EVA storage area she was only able to find one canister of Air Supply.

“That, that... that... was the parasite. But we created... we synthesized a vaccine… a cure...”, looking around, Dr. Flynn said, “We all took the inoculation, right?”

His question was met with nods from the other Cronus survivors.

“We never saw if Cooper or that little girl did,” said the British woman.

“No.... She wasn’t inoculated... our parents said they would administer it to us themselves... Papa emptied them out somewhere... but I think they were forced to take it themselves...”, Roku said, remembering vaguely. “My guess is that Dr Cooper didn’t take it either... .”

Capt. Kenny calmly sipped his coffee as he listened to the crew discuss being inoculated by something the company insisted on. This might mean they were aware of the parasites in the first place and he had now sent his crew and himself unprepared into danger to recover their research and samples. It proved how the company saw people as expendable objects. It was all the more reason to get away from the company. Sadly he would have to wait for a golden opportunity to get out of his situation assuming he would survive this suicide mission. Kenny was not amused by the company's agenda as he took a few calm breaths to relax despite the insanity that was on display before him. Now he began to wonder what was actually injected into the crew of the Cronus. Were they really given a cure or were they injected by something worse like the parasites themselves? Kenny would need to push the isolation procedures when they managed to get back to the ship in case one of the Cronus crew was carrying another parasite. Sadly they also had at least one more large parasite on the Cronus to deal with. Kenny wondered how many parasites could hatch inside one human. If it was only one then they would need to count the dead bodies to see how many possible parasites could be running around on the Cronus. Then he decided to speak up to the crew.

Vera returned with the air and two medkits. "There may be more things worth grabbing back there, but I wanted to make sure you had this."

Vera helped Jensen replace his Air Supply.