Codename Alpha: Intervention

Chapter Ten - Nothing to Fear (But Fear Itself)

"Blagodaryu, Posol," a compressed-sounding voice demanded. Whatever I'd been dreaming about quickly began to slip my mind. At most, I could remember it had something to do with O-KPIX, Korosten's news station. Beyond that, however, it was a jumble. I was already immediately aware that I was in zero-g while waking up, but was still initially confused as to why I was in some kind of space capsule. After about a second, I shook my head, and everything that happened yesterday came flooding back. It was debatable if "yesterday" was even the right word here, since it felt like I'd only had a quick power nap or something.

As I got a bearing of my surroundings, I remembered why I even woke up in the first place. It didn't take much thinking to realize that the voice over the computer was probably Russian ground control. I had no idea whether or not they'd understood my message, and given the fact that they were speaking in their native language, they probably didn't. Then again, there was a possibility that they did, but were understandably concerned about the well-being of their astronauts, and didn't have a human who spoke Rekanian nearby. It was probable the Columbia spacecraft was receiving a similar message, but I didn't know how to speak English either.

"Posol, pozhaluysta, dolozhite. Kakoy u vas status? V chem smysl boleye ranney peredachi?"

Since there wasn't much I could say to presumably reassure them at this point, I began looking around the capsule. As I turned my head up, I realized that anybody walking past would have a direct line of sight into the capsule, and by that extent, would have certainly been able to hear the radio. Panicking slightly, I turned back around and began to flip every switch on the comms panel to what I believed was the 'off' position, in addition to turning down some dials to a little red marker. At the very least, it didn't seem I'd broken anything, so the Russians returning to their spacecraft later hopefully wouldn't have too much trouble getting their radio back into control.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I stretched and yawned, before straightening myself out and floating upwards into the upper part of the spacecraft, with all of the drawers and whatnot. Thankfully, it didn't seem that anything had changed since I came in. I made sure I still had my laptop as I climbed into the docking arm, orienting myself so that I'd be crawling out into the airlock. As I was standing back up, I nearly jumped out of my fur upon hearing some kind of motion sound down the corridor.

Holding my breath, I peeked around the corner to see if it was one of the mutineers coming to take me away or something - only to see it was something quite the opposite. It was simply one of the little circular robot vacuum things that go around every night, just going about it's routine. I then leaned against the wall, and sighed once more. I had to lead the charge in getting people out of the shuttlebay and reclaiming the ship from armed mutineers, and here I was, getting spooked by a Mister Roboto. In a way, I was glad it was indeed just a cleaning robot, and not actually a mutineer, but I was still embarrassed for some obvious reasons.

I checked the corridor once more just to be safe in case anyone was actually there. Seeing that there weren't, I sprinted down, back to the stairwell I had entered this deck from, and opened up my laptop. I stopped the program which was messing with the cameras, and said a quick prayer to myself, hoping that nobody watching the cameras had noticed anything wrong with them. Considering how it seemed nobody had walked past the capsule or even been in this section recently, it seemed I was safe.

The Mister Roboto turned the corner and began slowly and methodically cleaning the corridor I was standing in. I realized that it could potentially make for a good distraction method, much in the same way that it had spooked me. It was possible that I could send out all the cleaning robots to confuse patrols or something. Thinking about it more, though, I quickly realized that it was a stupid idea.

Since there wasn't much else I could do at the moment, I began walking to my quarters. Though using cleaning robots to scare people was more fit for an end-of-year shipwide prank or the like, I needed something that would pull guards out from the shuttlebay, preferably at a time when there were already very few. In regards to the latter, I'd probably have to be present to observe shifts and whatever, but with the former, I did have one idea in mind.