"Commander!"
"Commander!"
Opening his eyes quickly Ridge woke up to the view of the warehouse that he was organizing.
"Huh, wasn't I just..."
"Commander, are you okay?" A man asked with a bit of concern in his voice.
Ridge looked up and saw that it was Hank. "Ah, yeah, I must have been tired and sat to rest, but I ended up dozing off," he said quietly while looking around.
Hank seeing this also looked around but didn't spot anything, "Okay, well the crew is making food and I was asked to go get you when someone noticed you weren't done yet."
Nodding Ridge sat up and squinted his eyes slightly, it was unusual for him to fall asleep. Besides his suspicion and a bad feeling in his gut, he couldn't quite put his finger on anything so he just scratched his head and joined Hank in returning to the main cafeteria room. What he didn't notice, however, was a small particle-like fungus spore that was slowly floating from one of the dark corners of the warehouse.
Hanging the tablet on the wall again and shutting the light switch off, he entered the kitchen and could smell right away that a couple of cooks whose names escaped him were making a stew of some kind. Likely with potatoes, some seasoning, and maybe dried meat. Rubbing his slightly growling stomach he raised his wrist and began typing some commands into the panel.
Activating a speech function he brought the panel closer to his mouth and began to speak, "Testing, testing," Hearing the speakers in the cafeteria still working he continued, "It's around Nineteen-hundred in time right now, which means the typical dinner time will begin. Despite the mess in the cafeteria, we have had people working to clean up so once you are done with what you're doing come on down. I will also make a separate announcement with everyone gathered so make sure you are here, Ridge out."
With his voice being relayed throughout the ship, many of the people who were working looked up to their nearest speakers, and after hearing the contents they immediately set down what they were doing and began to walk towards the cafeteria.
Caroline who was also working hard at repairing some areas around the engine stood up to listen. Lifting her visor that was protecting her eyes from the brightness and also the splatter of sparks coming from the welds she was making sighed aloud.
In truth, she had been lying when asked about the engine earlier. There was more damage to be fixed than just a few dents and the biggest problems were the protective casing of the nuclear reactor as well as breaks in the connecting circuits to the ship's batteries that allowed them to travel through space with stored power.
The casing generally could be welded together which was what she was doing now, but it wouldn't stop the spread of radiation entirely with the materials that she had on hand. Over time the radiation would spread further and further and also become much more denser which would lead the entire engine room to become a zone of extreme danger to the human body.
Although the spacesuits they had on could prevent too much radiation damage, once again over time they would fall victim to radiation rather than running out of supplies.
She couldn't find a way to fix the circuits and wires needed to connect the batteries to the reactor. She could only ensure that the remaining ones were kept in good condition. Materials were essentially the fix for everything, but for now, she would just need to keep using some of the debris here and there to make fixes slowly.
"Alright, let's go to the cafeteria and get something to eat before we resume work," She said while fully taking off the visor and fixing her somewhat tangled hair.
The mechanic crew around her followed suit and they all stopped what they were doing to tidy up and walk on down to the cafeteria. Before doing so they all of course made sure to walk into a purifying room that was used for getting rid of radiation while engineers worked on the outside of the ship connected by a wire or rope.
In the bridge, Berkay was still hard at work trying to find out where they were, and after being disturbed by the speakers on the shape he listened to Ridge speak. Hearing that there was going to be an announcement he felt it would probably be about the navigation problems.
Rubbing his now messy hair he shut off the navigation table, leaving it on an idle mode that automatically scanned as far as its range could spread, and walked out towards the cafeteria, not of course before rubbing his eyes and fixing his glasses to seem more lively.
It took some time for every single person to make it to the cafeteria and as Ridge watched people continue to filter in, around ten minutes passed. Seeing Caroline, Berkay, Yahaya, and everybody else he nodded. The good thing about the time it took for the people to filter in was that the stew was finished cooking.
They seemed to have started cooking not long after he was in the warehouse working and then eventually sleeping so at least there was a piece of good news for everyone.
With everyone now sitting in the cleaner spots without any debris and flipped tables that had attached chairs also flipped, he walked atop a bit of debris to seem taller and cleared his throat.
Eyes looking toward him he stared back for only a moment and spoke, "Before we begin to feast to our heart's content on this food that a couple of members cooked up, I want to say two things. Both of which are rather important and should be taken very seriously."
Looking around and seeing nods he continued, " The navigation system has essentially been downgraded due to the longer range sensors being torn off, and because of this, we have no idea where we are. As you might have already noticed when we were all on the bridge together, there also doesn't seem to be a planet or star that has previously always been seen so this means we got transported someplace entirely different, and for now, we are still figuring out where exactly."
Letting out a huge information dump he let the group process this and murmurs quickly broke out, but luckily many of the people on the ship were trained individuals so it wasn't something that completely broke everybody's morale and Ridge could hear that most everyone was positive about finding a way back.
"Furthermore, I would just like to give out a warning. I was working in the warehouse earlier and unknowingly fell asleep. Now this could just be because I was stressed and needed some more rest, but knowing myself, I know that I wouldn't just randomly fall asleep in the middle of work, so perhaps there is something at play here. Once again I am not sure entirely, but, if you feel yourself becoming more sleepier than usual let me know directly, or even let the ship's doctors know so they can study it," Ridge spoke extensively once again, only this time it was a warning. He knew something was up with the situation in the storage room and at the very least it would be best to let others know.
"You can eat and talk among yourselves now," Ridge said as he came down from the small pile of debris to get some food for himself as well.
Grabbing food and eating it took only another ten or so minutes for him and whilst talking with some of the others like Berkay to further plan things out and talk about the whole sleeping situation while eating, he eventually finished and then walked back to the bridge by himself and into the commander's room that was directly connected to the bridge on the left.
His old room was entirely a mess with hanging wires sparking out here and there, as well as a ton of debris so he decided to just take refuge in the old commander's room. Entering he began to take the spacesuit off and hung it on a wall that was specifically designed for such a task as carrying a spacesuit.
The previous commander of the H.C. Heart, Arthur, to be quite plain wasn't a very good commander in terms of commanding ability, however, he did have a very specific trait related to planning that made it so he was always prepared, something that Ridge seemed to always lack at times. Smiling to himself Ridge walked over to the bathroom and checked to see if the water was still working.
It was luckily still working just fine and by the looks of the water, nothing managed to infect it or anything. Checking the commander's wardrobe and seeing only one outfit replicated many times he also remembered that Arthur was very plain in the sense of always having the same outfit. Shaking his head he grabbed some clothes and took a quick shower to wash some of the grime and sweat from him gathered by essentially being active all day, especially when fighting the infected.
The clothes were all black with some white linings and to be exact it was the standard issued uniform for all commanders within the Coro Federation, some customization was also allowed of course but Arthur just opted for the basic noncustomized one.
Perhaps RIdge should feel grateful for the fact that the commander didn't wear anything weird. He did feel grateful, however, with the fact that his and the commander's sizes were pretty much all the same. If only a little tighter fitting on him due to his habit of working out more than the commander.
As he dried off his body and rubbed his hair with one of the clean towels that were in the bathroom and put on the uniform, he sat down on the bed and sighed.
"This is one big mess," he whispered.
Interrupted by a series of excited knocks he got up and opened the door. Berkays excited face was shown right away.
"Sir! I finally managed to find something!"