Chapter Text
Danny was very, very unprepared for what the Aurora had in store for him. But really; who would be prepared for something like this?
The pamphlets Alterra passed out didn’t mention anything about radioactive fallout. Ancient’s’ they hadn’t even covered the possibility of a crash!
Yet here he was! All by his lonesome, prepping to venture into a mangled spaceship that claimed to be indestructible.
‘Spoiler Alert!’
The ship was incredibly destructible.
Now, he’s left to compile a list of everything he needs like he’s about to go shopping.
Need to craft
-Extra batteries,
-Laser cutter
-Stasis rifle(scratch that the recipe’s gone)
-Propulsion gun
-Rations
-A radiation suit
___
A radiation suit was one of his more dire necessities right now. All his life he’d been exposed to hazardous material but not once had he ever felt as sick as he did after swimming through the crash site.
He’d recovered quickly- though that still confused him- but that was just a lucky break.
Radiation was one of those things you shouldn’t frivolously try your luck with. It could straight up liquify your organs; unravel your DNA, and cripple your descendants for generations!
All of his molecules were messed up as it is. He’s still facing the consequences of the portal, he doesn’t need a freaky ghost cancer tripping him up on top of that!
It’s a miracle he even made it out of the crash zone unscathed. Exposing himself to a lethal dose of radiation didn’t sound fun. If he’d been even a tad unluckier, he’d be puking his guts out in his sea base right now.
The Aurora could take hours, if not days to fix! And he spend all of that time nestled up close and personal to the ship’s most toxic inner workings.
Hacking away at it without any kind of protection would end poorly. There’s no way in hell he’d make it through without giving himself lead poisoning.
Mortality for Danny was little more than an old superstition, he held onto. It may slow him down, but what if he was capable of a permanent death?
There had to be a threshold on what he could survive. He’s still half human-
Isn’t he?
He shouldn’t taunt fate. Ancients know he needed fate on his side nowadays.
If not for him, then for the survival of his shipmates.
Plus, if he died before the Aurora was fixed the wildlife would die off. Any survivors would starve. And Sam would never let him rest in peace again if he were responsible for wrecking the environment!
The thought of facing an angry Sam was scarier than the very real, leviathan threat still following him around.
Dami was so much better than this guy. Danny really took him for granted. Even if he was bigger and overall scarier, the teenager’s presence was more welcoming than this creepy adult.
“Stop staring!” Danny snaps emptily. It’s no use, this guy can’t hear him.
If Dami thought of Danny like a new puppy, then this guy saw Danny as a lab rat! How he watched with eager eyes was too similar to his parents to be anything else.
There’s something about the way this fish eyed him that makes Danny want to crawl back onto his lifepod and stay there until the guy keeled over!
He already lived with scientists at home. His room was above a laboratory and his sister practiced her psychology tricks on him! Another set of eyes observing him shouldn’t be an issue…
-right?
The leviathan blinked sideways…gross.
There had to be a way to scare him off.
Everyone feared something. It didn’t matter what species you were, there’s gotta be something that’d put you on edge. While he’d never met a race of probably-sentient fish before now, the same rules should apply. Humans fear on instinct. Heights, spiders, snakes, darkness, anything that can kill you.
Obviously, Danny feared what could kill him.
That was common sense. Things he didn’t understand were frightening. Even if he went out of his way to learn more, it still upset him. The leviathan following him was probably searching for information too.
But that in itself is scary too.
What if this guy decided the best way to learn about him was to kill him?
Humans, with all their flaws do that all the time. Sometimes on accident, other times on purpose. The thought hovers over him… ‘if I’m a science project. What’s stopping him from pulling the plug if what he learned wasn’t interesting enough.’
So many things about his current situation. And still there wasn’t anything he could weaponize to chase this creep off! Unless he’d developed telepathy overnight beaming a “hey dude, you’re kind of making me uncomfortable,” straight into someone’s head wasn’t an option.
He’s just gotta deal with the audience and hope he gets bored.
For now, he’d focus on gathering resources.
The threat of his fate going on unknown to his family hovered over him. It wasn’t his fault the Aurora crash. It wasn’t! But what would people think when Phantom never showed up again? Knowing his parents, they’d find a way to pin the blame on him.
He’s used to being a scapegoat, but he did not want the deaths of all his coworkers to be placed on his shoulders!
But how could he stop that from happening?
It’d taken a little over a decade for anyone to find a trace of the Desagi crew; and Danny had been the one to find it! Would it take them that long to find the aurora? Surely not. Technology had advanced since then.
They’d make it out of here. Hell, there was already a rendezvous point! Danny just needed to find it!…
…Hopefully, they’d wait for him.
That creepy fish had stopped snapping at him a while a good. Small victories, right? Danny didn’t want to be anyone’s lunch. If only this guy could learn personal space, that’d be great.
The sheer amount of trash buried beneath the sand was enough to warrant a ‘kill on sight’ warrant from the locals. Chunks of glowing titanium was hot enough to turn the seabed to glass. Broken off pieces of the ship, masses of wires and shipment crates from the cargo bay.
Most of it was useless to him at the moment. There’s only so many metal crates a person could scrap before their base was stacked full of titanium and copper wire.
Knowing an abomination of muscle and rage was lurking in the crash zone bumped the need for a stasis rifle higher up his priority list. Those ugly teeth and sharp mandibles would be nasty for his tiny self to deal with.
The goal was to avoid the reaper entirely, but he didn’t even know if that was the only one! If everything went south, he’d need a way to escape. That means he’d need to recover the recipe asap.
If he had it before, it’s gone now. There’s something janky about these pdas. Or maybe it was just his specifically?
Not to offend the Ai, but this thing was a total piece of junk.
Alterra’s the one to blame for that. The very model he’s holding now was the same model as the ones he’d found in the old desagi base.
The same model that came out when his mom and dad were still in college! He’s heard of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” but there had to be a limit.
It was cheaper for them to buy and reuse the older models to stock the life pods.
They held up well enough to justify it. Hopefully, they equipped the engineers with newer models. But even if they didn’t, one of the richer schmucks who actually bought tickets to board would have something he could use for an upgrade.
Soon, his creepy stalker had grown bored of just watching him. Now he’d taken it upon himself to awkwardly puppy guarding the chunks of scrap Danny actually needed.
What was with these fish and blocking him from doing things?
Was it a way to establish dominance? If so, it wasn’t working. Without hesitation he’d fight back! Every time he tried to block him, Danny would smack him, swimming beneath his belly when waiting for him to move took too long.
It was easy to ignore him when you remembered the size difference between he and Dami. If he could describe it, he’d say it’s like being stalked by Godzilla, but then a crocodile takes his place.
The sheer difference between the two of them gives you false confidence. You think you can fight him. You can’t, but you think you can.
He was itty bitty in comparison! Still big enough to swallow Danny whole but not scary enough to garner respect.
To him, this guy was a creepy fish who missed a couple growth spurts.
He needed to think of a nickname for this guy. Something slightly condescending and fitting for a creep. Tiny… It had to rhyme so- Tina? Tim?
Tiny Tim.
That seemed fitting. He looked like a Tim. The type of guy who’d rock a bowl-cut and make people uncomfortable with his dead-eyed stare.
Don’t ask him how he decided that. He’s going off vibes alone. And those were the vibes Tim’s giving off.
Tiny Tim had gone from watching Danny with rapt attention, to nudging a coffee machine with the point of his nose.
For a bit it was funny to watch. A handless fish trying to work human technology? Come on, that’s hilarious! Like the sharks that bite into the internet cables on earth.
It slowly stopped being funny when he spilled cups out into the sea like an aquatic litterbug. Danny had to pick up those plastic cups. Because Tiny Tim didn’t have hands.
His annoyance had warped into horror when the machine worked. The tap of Tim’s nose had registered as a human touch. And suddenly, a cloud of muddy brown coffee was spilling out into the shallows.
Fish should not be able to work a coffee machine! That’s a major design flaw that all the…fish could exploit.
Danny watched in horror as Tiny Tim’s eyes dilated like a cat who’d gotten their first lick of catnip. And the sight should’ve been funny! But caffeine was poison to most creatures on earth and he’d no reason to assume things worked differently here.
Slamming his hands against rough, rugged skin, he shoved the shark as hard as he could. Tiny Tim didn’t budge! He didn’t even move an inch! Instead, his gills flared, as he swallowed gulp after gulp of contaminated seawater.
Ancient’s, he looked giddy as a kid in a candy store.
A child with very poor taste. Danny didn’t know what Alterra stocked their machines with but it wasn’t good. He’d hardly even consider the stuff coffee! It was just awful. So awful that it made drinking dumpster water sound appealing.
Bitter tasting, yet oddly sour. He’d only ever taken a sip and the metallic aftertaste lingered on his tongue for hours on end.
Worst of all…
It’s decaf.
Synthesized and diluted by a fabricator; it was not fit for human consumption. They didn’t even use real coffee beans! He wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out these machine were pumping cups full of molten plastic.
Only when he’s about to have an aneurysm that Tiny Tim drifts away from the cloud. Their body is trembling like a leaf, their tendrils jittery.
“Please don’t overdose,” He crosses his fingers ,repeating the phrase again and again like a mantra.
The scanner. It said everything was fine. But it’s also said a lot of things since the crash, and Danny didn’t know whether or not to trust it.
Monitoring him like he’s a person nurse; he watches as Tiny Tim kicks up plumes of sand. In a caffeinated frenzy, he nosedives into the seabed like he’s trying to snort it! He tosses things left and right in his flurry of excitement.
Is… Is this what Jazz felt when Danny first started drinking coffee?
He owed her an apology. For a lot of things.
Wait a second!
The but of a stasis rifle pokes out of the ground. He barely catches a glimpse of it before Tiny Tim launches it up into the water at top speed. Because of course he does! The one thing he actually needs and this guy was throwing it around like a hacky sack!
Danny catches it. The broken tool disappearing to the modern magic of his scanner before it even hits the sand. Tiny Tim freezes, his eyes bulging at the sight. In shock he stills, and Danny leaves him to fester.
He steps into his base. A robotic voice greet him as soon as he enters just like it’s supposed to. And like he’s supposed to, Danny sets off to work with the fabricator.
It’s boring. The cool sci-fi aspect that’d once enamored him had long since worn off. He spent most of his time standing and waiting with the fabricator. You couldn’t even watch the machine work!
Staring straight at those flashing lights and lasers made spots dance beneath his eyelids.
By the time his fancy new tools and radiation suit is done, he’s raring to go.
The new suit is sleeker, than the one that’d been packed in the life pods. Dull blues covered his lower body, a matte silver accenting his
The design of his new suit is sleeker than the one he wore now. Dull grays covered his body, belts and buckles accented by yellow black. A screen on his leg glowed neon blue. His helmet was thicker than before, a sturdy respirator built into it; making the one he’d made before completely obsolete. Thick tinted glass shrouded his entire face from the second he put his helmet on.
It’s heavy, the suit altered to fit his smaller form. The idea of radiation suits being needed for someone as small as him was disturbing. A necessary precaution but one that was unnerving nonetheless.
Looking at himself gave him that same uneasiness as looking at the child sized gas masks from ww2.
But there's no more time to think of that. No time to stall! Collecting his courage, he sets off towards the crash site, Tim stalking alongside him.
But their alliance doesn’t last long. As the waters grew musty, Tim paused anxiety wafting off him. Danny didn’t blame him for faltering, he wasn’t big enough to fight a reaper like Dami could, but that’s okay. He’d no plans on fighting those beasts.
He could, however, blame Tim for trying to stop him. Danny knew he was going to try and act like a barricade before Tim even moved his body. If this were any other situation, he’d appreciate the warning, maybe he’d even heed it.
But Danny’s prepared. He’s ready to face the risk of death and he mostly knew what he was doing!
He’s seen of reapers would attack something heaps bigger than them and he’d seen what it took for them to back off. Both of them knew a fight with a reaper meant death but only Danny knew the Aurora’s drive core was the bigger threat to them!
He couldn’t be the one to turn around.
The thought of asking Tim to move briefly crosses his mind. But the words don’t leave his mouth before he realizes how stupid that idea is.
Neither of them understood each other! Tim didn’t speak English and Danny didn’t speak whatever language Tim spoke. Hell, they probably didn’t even have the same rules of body language!
So Danny clenches his fists, and takes a deep breath. What little power he can muster flows through his veins awkwardly, but it does the job. It takes a second but Danny phases through the leviathan’s body.
The feeling of his no longer solid body slipping through him is nauseating. Like the first time he’d ever phased through a person. That was the feeling of forgetting to make the area he phased through intangible as well.
He forgot what that felt like. Awful.
And unfortunately, he’d be needing to do that again and again as Tim thrashed his tail back into Danny's path. He moved like a squirming, creepy roadblock.
Tim couldn’t stop him. As he crept closer to the flaming wreckage of the Aurora the water seemed to grow thicker and rusty.
Scrap was strewn about everywhere but there wasn’t a trace of human remains. Someone stupider would see that as a sign that survivors were in the plenty. But he knew better. That explosion would’ve obliterated anyone anywhere near the Aurora.
Nobody could survive that. Not even if they’d hidden within the safest, most barricaded section of the ship.
A gapping wound had been punched into the ship’s hull. Flames cradled metal scaffolding, the ribs of the ship exposed to the elements.
As he stepped above water, the loud groans reached his ears. Listening to the rumbling of the dying ship was like listening to a loved one on life support.
Beams trembling, wires snapping; the whole place was falling apart. Anyone with a brain could see that.
“Warning: ship’s structural integrity is low. Fire suppression equipment and laser cutter may be required. Exploration is conducted at your own risk.” His Pda chirped out the obvious but Danny thanked it regardless.
The ship was ablaze. And believe it or not, it wasn’t supposed to be that way. Alterra did not build their space craft with the intent of crashing into planets.
This wasn’t the death star even if the company that built this was morally bankrupt.
Rubble was strewn about everywhere. Floodlights were tossed around, bent like paper clips and the storage crates spilled their guts down a ramp. Exits sat crumpled, blocked off by rebar and crates that slid out of place when the ship went down.
Danny padded cautiously up a ramp, doing his best to suppress the roaring flames as he went. Frigid breaths of ice shot from his finger tips, the smaller fires snuffed out quickly as he darted place to place.
A creature scuttled closer on four spindly legs. The animal stood close to the ground, with legs like pincers. Strange… It seemed like “crab” wasn’t just earth's default form of animal.
Though, just like a lot of the fish he’d seen on this planet, the crab sported a giant eye. The observants would love this place- or hate it, Danny didn’t really care.
A single giant blue eye sat oddly at the top of the crab’s head. Dead center of its skull, the crab crouched down to catch sight of him.
For a split second, it froze, revving up before launching itself full force straight for Danny’s face.
A scream ripped from his throat, as he slashed wildly at the creatures snapping legs. It ran up at him, dodging his blade and dancing around him with murderous intent.
Why was this thing so angry?!
The animal attacked in short bursts, giving Danny the time to jump out of the way before it could slash his tiny ankles. Was he really small enough that crabs thought they could take him down?
Scratch that. He definitely was. With a scowl he turned his knife in his hands.
“Go for the eye,” He muttered to himself as he waited for the animal to charge at him for what would hopefully be the last time.
As it leaped through the air, Danny struck. His blade sunk into the jelly of its eye, Danny pinning the squirming creature and forcing the blade all the way through.
Its beady eye goes milky white, legs stalling and snapping one last time before they go completely stiff and motionless.
His heart thumps heavy in his chest, his legs shaking. “It’s just a crab.” He whispers to himself. He’s faced worse on this planet. Heck, he’d faced worse on his planet!
But there’s something odd about this animal. Something wrong about how easy it was to chop through it, and something scary to its unrelenting aggression.
He didn’t know what was wrong with this thing but there was something about it that made every bone in Danny’s body shout out in alarm.
“Don’t let it touch you” The thought repeated itself in his head like a mantra. Yellow blood crept down the ramp and down his hand. He hadn’t let go of the knife that pierced through down its middle.
The shell had given in too easily. Its bottom caved in wetly as if the creature had been rotting for weeks. And its eye had cut easily like a soft cheese. Toxic green peeked out from beneath his stab wound. A sac, bulbous and twitching sat just below its shell.
Danny drops his grip on the blade like it’d turned to acid. The crab could keep it. Danny didn’t care, he didn’t want that thing’s blood on his hands anymore.
Rushing away, Danny looks at his hands in horror. From his palms to his fingers, yellow had stained them. The contaminate having splashed from the second he’d first swung his blade.
Luckily, he’s unharmed from the vicious attack but that probably wouldn’t last long. There were more of them.
More crabs, scuttling curiously like they were innocent. But Danny could see the way their mouths twitched. They were all hungry, but none of them ever attacked as viciously.
They kept their distance, stalking towards him and lunging only when they thought they had a chance of winning. A few zaps from his laser cutter had them scuttling away.
They’d be cute if they weren’t so stabby.
“Caution: scans show the digestive tracts of nearby lifeforms contain human tissues."
What…? Danny froze, pointing his scanner at one of the shyer crabs. There was human meat in its stomach. Actual human flesh… No wonder they were so boldly trying to kill him- they’d already had a taste!
Now, it’s not like he expected to find any survivors. For god’s sake the ship’s been baking in radiation for days! But of all the things he’d expected to eat the bodies left behind, crabs were not on that list!
That’s just all types of wrong.
Couldn’t the reapers have eaten them? They were quite literally a short swim away from the hull. Why could the bodies be scavanged by something cooler?
It’s strange, but he’d rather see a corpse. That’d make things seem less eerie. It’d make him feel less alone.
With the shake of his head, Danny continues his trek carefully. His propulsion gun is heavy, its battery draining rapidly. One use could take him from 100% battery to 78% in a matter of seconds.
This was one of the many things that had him regretting taking his powers for granted. Telekinesis was overpowered and he barely used it! One of his most useful powers and he could count the times he’d used it on one hand!
When he’d held all those shiny, more destructive powers at his fingertips, giving himself a headache to bend spoons had seemed like a waste of time.
Now something he could do easily just a week ago was being done sloppily by alterra tech.
It’s no surprise Vlad never stocked Valarie with any of Allterra tech. Television hyped up this tech to him like it’d be a sci-fi nerd’s dream, but when it came down to it the stuff in Amity was more practical. Ectoplasm was one hell of an energy source.
Maybe, if he was here long enough he could recreate some of his parents tech?
“Aurora systems are running on local reserve power. Unable to remotely download blackbox data,” His PDA chirps, and that’s fine. He’s not here for any blackbox data, he’s just glad it’s not another warning about a flesh eating crab.
Almost everything’s on fire, and it’s not much better when he gets inside. Not that he’d expected it to look any better. They’d been shot down for Ancient’s sake!
”Scans of damage to the Aurora do not match any known offensive technologies.”
Fuck. That’s just what he’d been dreading to hear. Alien tech? Probably. That’s just his luck. He’s one of the first people to interact with sentient alien life and they had guns! He can barely wrap his head around it.
This should excite his space loving self shouldn’t it? No. He can’t bring himself to feel the hype. Not when he didn’t know who or what had shot them down.
The leviathan’s he’s already met came to mind as suspects but his scanner barely recognized them as sentient. Plus, if they made a weapon like that they would’ve killed him on sight upon seeing him alive.
And Tim had been so curious, like he’d never seen a helmet or a scanner. If his species built a weapon that could detect and shoot down ships from outside their planet’s atmosphere, they’d know about radiation and fabricators. A scanner shouldn’t baffle a species that advanced. Unless this species was building nukes before they built cities, it shouldn’t confuse them as much as it did.
Seeing the damage was supposed to answer questions but now it only seemed to surface more of them!
Putting out fire after fire Danny starts to grow exhausted already. There's so much of it. Blazing reds and oranges burning into the back of his retinas.
Any pda left behind he plucked off the ground. There wasn’t much time for him to do much more than skim through them.
As Danny continues ahead, he reaches a crossroads. Two glowing signs flicker “cargo bay 3” and “Administration,” Which to explore first? It seemed obvious.
The cargo bay was one of the few doors on the ship that locked. If it came down to it he could phase through. But did he really want to make himself any more nauseous?
Administration was the better bet if he wanted to find any code or secret info that’d give him any insight on what’s going on within the ship!
He could only hope that Alterra’s people left their codes and passwords everywhere like his parents did.
“Aurora systems are running on reserve power. Unable to remotely download black box data.” Well that’s expected, considering the whole place was in shambles. But Danny wasn’t looking for any black box data.
He was here to prevent nuclear fallout! Which was a bit more important if you asked him.
The door to administration is blocked by a wall of flames. A bad sign for anyone scavenging for info. Did anyone use paper anymore?
Alterra used a mix of both digital and physical records last time he checked. How much heat could these PDA’s tolerate before they all went kaput? Not much probably. None of the computers here were built to withstand the heat of this burning ship.
If the radiation in here didn’t fry all the tech the heat would’ve finished the job long before he got here. But still, he was hopeful there’d be something of worth here for him.
Fire extinguisher in hand, he attacks the flames dead on. Ice shoots from the tips of his fingers, the cold nipping at the flicker edge of the inferno.
Danny’d never seen fires die as quickly as they did on this ship. Blame it on dwindling oxygen supply or the tameness of a fire not stoked by ectoplasm, but it seemed Danny had a promising career as a fire fighter waiting for him back home!
Stepping into admin, he rushes to suppress the growing flames before they can engulf a console sitting in the middle of the room. The screen flickers, a green document frozen on its digital face.
The entire office is trashed. That’s saying a lot considering Aterra’s strict rules of minimalist decor. They weren’t even allowed to hang up posters if they weren’t promotional material for the company!
He runs his hand across the heat warped plastic of a laminated ad for the prawn suit. The armored suit stands tall, and even Danny can admit it’s kind of cool. If he hadn’t already seen and used mech armor, he might’ve looked at this poster with stars in his eyes.
But instead, he pulled it down, folding the poster in halves, then quarters, until it fit small and neat in his bag. A tablet sitting on a bench below where the poster used to be was more interesting to him. Its contents were short and sweet. Packaged in the form of a disgruntled note from an underpaid admin member. At the bottom of the note scrawled the code to the cargo bay.
That’s probably not secure or safe to write down. But who was Danny to complain when it made his life so much easier?
The terminal gave him an article for the Aurora. When they’d first taken off, he’d read this, excitement bubbling in his chest.
Looking at it now, the article only struck uneasiness. Like picking up old newspapers about the Titanic. You know what’s going to happen to it, you know it’s awful; and you know it’s budget cuts or humanities cockiness to blame.
He wished he could curse Alterra’s poor planning and worry for the crewmembers from a safer distance. Preferably at home, where there weren’t any giant murder fish.
Heading back out admin, Danny stares dead at the sign for the third cargo bay. How many cargo bays did the ship need? Apparently, three; because four would just be excessive!
There’s a ramp leading down to a door crowded by upended furniture. Now Danny could jump onto a ledge above that door. He could wallcrawl, press his butt against the open flames and break his legs when he jumped down.
Or…?
He could-and this might sound crazy- crawl over those crates? They only stood about four feet high-ish. He wasn’t a video game character, he knew how to climb! It wouldn’t be easy considering his state, but it’s doable.
Yanking himself up onto the top of a larger storage crate, Danny shoves a desk off the stack. It clatters loudly against metal floors and if the ship wasn’t groaning so loudly, Danny might’ve been startled by the noise.
Instead, he drops down rushing down the hall to the cargo bay, its metal door standing intimidatingly at the end. The desk, dragged by his propulsion gun, acts as a stepstool. His fingers hover above the keypad.
1- beep.
4-beep.
5-beep.
4-beep.
<
…
…
…
-Click
Oh thank god.
The air deflates from his lungs. A breath he didn’t know he was holding finally releasing when heard that click. Flat palms pressed against the door he clumsily slides it open.
It jams at the end, the metal slipping and falling out of socket. Permanently open, Danny slips through.
Standing atop a trembling set of stairs, he scans across a fire-lit room. Storage crates had slid when the ship started plummeting. They clustered up together. Some dented open; others sealed as securely as they’d been at takeoff.
All things considered, this might be the least destroyed room of the ship. Spacious, and furnished by supply crates, there wasn’t much here to burn.
It might actually be worth it to sweep through and raid the place when the whole “drive core” situation was done and over with.
Roaming, he trails down a ramp diving off an elevator platform and splashing into another flooded section of the ship.
As if waiting for him, the second he dove in, something latched onto his arm. Blue tendrils curled around his bicep, fangs fumbling to pierce through his suit.
It looked like the secret love child of a leech, mosquito and a tick. An unholy amalgamation of every blood-sucker on earth. A light-blue sac slowly began to fill with red as the pest pulled the blood veins.
Suckling a few drops, the bug freezes, it’s body seizes, jaws popping open and the tendrils going stiff.
He pokes it. Not gentle but not hard either, he just nudges it with two fingers; and it flops over. It floats stiff on it’s back like a tub toy
-It’s dead…
Did his blood just kill a guy?!
That’s concerning isn’t it? Human blood shouldn’t be able to do that. The fact that it could kill an animal did not say anything good about his health…
…So he’s poisonous now- or was it venomous? Either way it’s cool! On this ocean planet, anything that tried to take a bite of him was soggy toast!
Apparently, the other blood suckers didn’t have the brains to comprehend this. Each time he moved, another one of them latched their squishy blue tendrils around his arm.
Each leech that died seemed to draw others closer. They swarmed to consume the corpses of their fallen brothers.
He swims onward, the water growing shallow as he follows a glowing sign.
“The Drive core shielding sustained internal damage during the collision. Do not attempt to repair without appropriate qualifications,” As he walks through the door, his Pda chitters out another warning
Growing up with scientists for parents counts as qualification- right? Cleaning the lab was one of his chores; fixing/sabotaging machinery a mandatory hobby.
Danny isn’t doing anything illegal right now. No sir! He’s a good, reactor core-repairing dubiously aged Alterra employee! One who’s totally fit for the job and didn’t die in a lab accident.
But it’s not like the tablet could stop him if he wasn’t qualified. It’s just a tablet. A tablet that could report him to whatever authority it had access to.
That might’ve scared him if his life wasn’t practically over already.
The drive core is…A mess. That’s the only word he could muster to describe it. The room is roaringly loud, the hum of failing machinery threatening to pop his eardrums.
Scorched metal plummeted from the ceiling, puffs of hot steam hissing up from where it splashed down.
The drive room was flooded, like a cup half full. Those little leeches-bleeders: as his Pda likes to call them- were lurking beneath lapping sea water.
Four towering pillars stood intimidatingly in the middle of the room. All four of them were connected by a grated catwalk. Bits of that catwalk laid sunken to the floor. If the room hadn’t flooded, he’d be risking a nasty fall right now.
The drive core stands tall and steaming hot. Just the sight of it has him frozen. A mix of awe and fear cemented his feet to the floor.
Though the smoke was thinner; the air couldn’t feel any thicker. It seemed to grip him by the skull, reaching down his throat and twisting his stomach in its hands.
“Warning: local radiation at maximum tolerable level.” Tolerable level? That was another way of saying -“Hey! Fix this. Or we're all gonna die!”-
Like chocolate left in the car on a sunny day, any hesitation melts from his body. He pries his feet off the floor taking a running start.
With the confidence of a trained swimmer and the skills of an amputee walrus Danny dives off the metal railing.
His head dips below the surface, his entire body tense as he tread through contaminated waters. Everything in this ship was contaminated, but this flooded room was the source of the problem.
A twisted center piece of this flaming wreck! Really, the drive core pulled the room together. Radiation gave the place that Chernobyl vibe! And that vibe was cancer.
In his head, his internal organs were already starting to liquify. Melting like the wicked witch of the west. According to his brain, he’s gonna be a messed up flesh candle by the end of this.
With strands of DNA being unraveled and used as jump ropes for all the cancer cells.
But in reality, there’s a repair tool in his very solid hand. A repair tool that slowly knit together gaping metal wounds in the core’s pillars.
In total, there’s eleven breaches. Between four pillars, there’s only eleven gashes for him to fix. He’s lucky there’s anything to repair at all, but still.
Maybe he was expecting something more intense? A damage that he couldn’t possibly comprehend or just something that’d vaporize him instantly.
That explosion had him expecting the worst; and it was the worst! This just wasn’t the perilous death-defying mission he’d hyped it up to be.
As he surfaced, the air already felt lighter. His job was done here. All that was left for him to do was explore the rest of the ship.
From the seamoth bay to the locker rooms, Danny rifled through every inch of each room. He takes what he can carry. Anything that’d be ruined by the seawater was stuffed into his backpack immediately.
Photos and notes of anything that’d identify his crewmembers was a priority. Their families deserved to have them.
Would it be rude to read them when he got back to base?
Probably, but he still needed the information.
The prawn bay is up a ramp behind a broken door. Flames taller than him block the way. Probably a sign he shouldn’t go in there; but Danny wasn’t one to heed warnings.
Inside, it’s like looking on at a moving picture of hell. Sparks raining from the ceiling, and support beams set alight. There’s hardly any floor to stand on!
The pipes of the ship were on full display, the room skewed sideways. Internals supposed to be kept hidden were being drowned with seawater.
Hanging from the ceiling were several prawn suits far from his reach. If could still fly, it might’ve been possible for him to scan them. But he couldn’t fly. So he climbed up the ramp to the and stepped into the hallway of the living quarters.
On the right, is the supply room. It’s chalked full of nutrient blocks, water bottles and other various commodities. This wasn’t the only supply room on the ship but it was the one closest to his cabin.
Digging around, he phases his hands into a box at the bottom of one of the tall shelves. When he pulls his hands back, he’s cradling a smaller metal box. Jarring and janky looking compared to Alterra’s sleeker designs, FentonWorks is printed in bold green letters on the box's lid.
He remembers packing this box with his parents. They’d been so paranoid, “there could be ghosts in space Danno! You can never be too careful!”
Alterra didn’t allow their employees to carry weapons. Meaning any ghost hunting equipment was left behind. The box was filled with precious things. Photos of him and his friends, seeds from Sam’s garden-that might actually be illegal to carry- a tiny jar of dirt from his backyard, a utility knife, some pens and a single journal with a star speckled cover.
He stashes the box away in his bag, stepping out into the canteen. Hosing down the flames, Danny stares at the upturned tables. It’s strange to see. Less than a week ago, he’d sat at those tables for breakfast.
The cabins aren’t any different. Looking at those ruined rooms is depressing. It gets worse as he collects what’s probably the last recorded words of several people.
Phasing past the captain quarter’s door, Danny finds himself disappointed. The room is starkly bare. There's only a blank screen of a dead data terminal and a record of their captain playing video games off the clock.
There’s nothing better for him to steal. No tech for him to salvage and nothing noteworthy to take home!
Sighing, Danny rushes back down to the prawn bay and-
…Cllick
Crickk…
The snoot of a certain creeper peeks above shallow water. He blinks surprised at Danny as if to say “oh hey, you’re still alive. That’s cool I guess,” Tiny Tim seemed more interested in the prawn suits than he was in Danny.
Looking up at the ceiling, the fish gapes with stars in his eyes. The tendrils at his sides swish back and forth as he lunged up to nip the suits metal boots.
“Hey!” Danny snaps, “Cut that out!” The last thing he needed was for Tiny Tim to successfully pull the thing down. It’d crush him at worst, punch him at best.
The leviathan turns to look at him, sitting cramped in the pipe crowded space. This was… this was awful.
Even though he’d “technically” completed his goal this trip was starting to feel like a total loss. He’d surfaced more questions than he’d answered. Most important being “How the hell did this leviathan get on the ship, and how do I get him back out?!”
The black box data was going to have to wait until he helped Tiny Tim.