Fate of Terra - Rise of Empires

Chapter 3.4 - Addition

Tika rose to wakefulness slowly, the smell of soildering clung to her feathers like a cloak of death; a warning to flee back into the embrace of dreamless sleep. Yet it hadn't been dreamless. Not true nightmarish, rather a prolonged experience of dread, enxiety and stress. Tousled sheets and the creak of her neck as she tried to stretch the tension away a testament to the exhaustion she knew would meet her eyaesa if she dared look into them.

Yes, Tika didn't want to be awake. It had taken her the remainder of the rotation plus a handful of zjhen into the next before she'd managed to fix the overloaded Beacons. She hadn't bothered testing them the night prior, it was just one task to many.

Herings felt sore, a result of such extensive time without support, crammed in against her back and down her flank. The groan befit that of the damned souls of undeath; a far cry from the typical melody attributed to her kin. Morosely she smiled.

'I guess it fit's,' Running a hand through the membranes. 'Death song.'

She hated that title. Hated how it defined her, ostracated her, how everyone only saw it as her entirety instead of an aspect of who she was and what she could offer. She sighed away the injustice of it. Just another thing to try and forget.

Flopping from the bed she took stock of what her options were. Each one wasn't great. The gunship wasn't luxurious, and the bed wasn't nearly as comfortable as the one on the station had been, but it had done its job. Depressing a button to fold the mattress away she hauled the blankets down to the miniscule laundry. The small space was only large enough for the single washer-dryer and a pressure press. Kicking the door shut behind her, Tika shambled into the shower.

Annoyingly, she'd yet to discover how to alter TBC's crew log. This meant that her once luxuriating hour of grooming was more a frigid affair of five minutes before the automated system cut off the water. She still hadn't forgiven the ships computer for that.

"TBC, Whats our position to the Alien fleet?" She snapped, stepping inside the stand-alone shower.

She knew she was being unkind but she was in no mood for mechanical sympathy. The damn display had been some form of liquid crystal design and it didn't have a spare. Instead she was forced to crawl through the under-bay maintenance chutes to disable the wiring that connected the console screen to the actual mechanical piece on the outside of the ship.

While it wasn't a hard task, the location 'of' the task made the mundane repair cramped and confined. Thinking back on it she probably should've worn her flight suit... but it was easier to blame the ship. She needed to blame the ship. Another spooning of dreary missery she knew she couldn't stomach.

The emotionless voice of TBC didn't seem to notice this - stupid thing that it was - and instead continued in its chipper voice. "We are maintaining a constant distance from the fleet."

"What have they been doing?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Can you please repeat?"

"The fleet, what are they doing?" Tika ground her pallet, stretching a glossy raven wing straight up.

"The fleet are performing manoeuvres."

"Specify."

"Specify what?" TBC asked as if it was the greatest thing in the universe.

"Specify the manoeuvres you useless hunk of junk!"

"The freighters that match my database are currently docking in a sequential order with the largest of the undocumented vessels. Would you like to know the manoeuvres of the Alien fleet?"

Sighing with frustration as she stepped from the waterless shower - her water allocation used; "Yes, display on the monitor in cabin 6."

"Displaying." TBC, ever exuberant, said with a thousand rays of sunshine.