[Rage at the Eclipse] - The First Phase [Applications now Open again!]

Jones put the ship into park and stood up, throwing his arms in the air.

"Aaaaand we're safe! For now!" Jones said. "How in the hellshaft did we make it out of that clusterfuck, huh!?"

He'd sit back down and carry them somewhere safe and secluded to make repairs.

Then he'd hop up and help with the fire and begin looking around the ship. Try to get a feeling for where everything was, and what needed fixing.

What desperately needed fixing, anyway. Everything probably needed fixing.

Lucy was currently in a hallway upside down, tangled up with the ruined robot, pretty battered, bruised, and grumpy.

"Hmm." Well, they weren't already dead, so it was unlikely they were going to die in the short term either. She slowly pulled herself up, licked her palms and wiped down her wounds, and got ready to fix up the bot. She mostly needed to go find some other appropiate chips and materials to probably replace parts of it's brain until it could work. Coding she could do thankfully. Ideally there was some robot maintenance repair kit about here somewhere, or an emergency chip in the robot. Robots were pretty important to fixing shit in space so hopefully there was something about for it.

Wilnarr hopped to his feet and dusted himself off. "Alright! Forward, to the great unknown! Away from those robots, at least. What even was the deal with those things?"

Curious, he went over to a console and tried to tune into any broadcasts he could receive up here. Maybe now they were up in space, he could listen in better and get an idea of what was happening on the ground.

Jones piloted the ship out near one of the system's gas giants, hoping to remain hidden in the radiation. Then hopped off to explore the ship as Wilnarr sat down.

Wilnarr listened to the radio broadcasts.

Everything was on fire, the warbots seemed to be attacking at random in the cities, attacking utilities mostly and then just haphazardly attacking random targets until destroyed. The vast majority of them where deployed in the rural areas of this hemisphere of the planet and seemed to be digging into the ground, building up strange pylons deployed from their mothership in orbit.

There were no readings coming from said mothership, indeed it didn't even register as a void in space, cosmic radiation continued as if there was not even an obstruction there. The ship had no visual sensors worth a damn and the windscreen was covered by a bulkhead, if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes from the ground, he wouldn't even know it was there.

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Lucy didn't find a robot repair kit per se, but she did find several defunct computers. Mostly old, non-functioning laptops (who even uses laptops anymore?) , which she could cannibalise to get a functioning CPU for the busted robot.

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Jones explored the ship!

Everything was held together with spit and duct tape. Sometimes literally. The reactor needed purging, the grav generators needed realignment, the warp core was functional but didn't have much of a lifespan left to it, the food synthesiser was busted, the toilet was on fire, despite the best efforts of Chroma to put it out, she couldn't find a fire extinguisher and was using a fire blanket to smother the chemical fire.

To top it all off, he found the ship exactly as Lucy found it, with a stupidly placed detachment switch and no means to control the engine room without the bridge and no means to propel the bridge without the engine room.

Also the berths were bare, there was only one mattress and half the springs poked out of it.

"We need an engineer," Jones said, looking at the sorry state of the ship.

He was a decent enough mechanic, but this ship was far beyond his abilities to fix. This would either take a fortune to fix, or a very dedicated engineer and a lot of spare parts.

He got to work looking for the nearest starport that wasn't currently under attack by a giant robot death army. Regardless of the future plans, finding a port to pull this ship together would probably be for the best.

The nearest star system with a starport worth half a damn was three jumps away.

It'd be risky with the warp drive the way it is, but doable.

After extinguishing most of the flames, Chroma went back to her chair, put on her seatbelt, and took a nap.

Jones did what he could to jury-rig the ship together further with his limited knowledge and went back to the cockpit.

"Right, gotta do three jumps to get us to a decent starport. Strap in, this is going to suck," he said, getting into the pilot's chair.

Once everybody was in their seats, he was off to the nearest starport worth a damn!

"The world is full of strife and chaos," Chroma said with her eyes closed. "Of course, it 'sucks.'"

The ship cruised to the outer system, well outside the Sun's effective gravity well which fucks with warp co-ordination. Sure you might land at your destination... ish. But you'd have no control over orientation, distance or closeness to the target star, Space Legends even said ships went way off course into dark space between stars or other, stranger places.

Which of course was bullshit.

The ship shook like a motherfucker as it entered warp, with the translation event hitting everyone like a physical blow across the entire body at once, which... wasn't supposed to happen. But once in warp the ship settled. The journey through the two intermediary systems was boring, with no comm nodes, settlements or ships to ping about news of the attack on Frajkt. However that changed when they entered the Unil system. Here there was a small habitable world with green seas, Planet Cairn, known for its Mining colonies. The starport that hung in its orbit was the real draw to the system however. The Station of Kir, a well reknowned stop off point for traders and stellar travellers of all kinds, and predictable the system was practically rife with traffic to and from the massive starport they could definitely get help here.

"Right, this station's called Kir. Decent place to stop," Jones said, flipping around in his seat. "So what do we want to do here, guys? Want to stick together? Owner of this ship's probably dead, so we could claim it. Form a crew. See if we can make something of ourselves, heh. Or we could sell it, go our own separate ways. I'm partial towards the former."

Wilnarr was out of breath after being punched in the lungs each of the three times they jumped into warp, but felt his breath coming back as Jones spoke. "I... have... an idea..." he said, grinning. "I was a holovid naturalist, back in the day. I could finally do it again."

He paused. "What? That's my plan. I missed doing it. I want to do it some more. If we have a ship, we'll be travelling around, and there's bound to be xenobeasts. If that's something we could account for, I'm in."

"Well, several missing steps between your dreams and reality. I think," Chroma said, dragging along her autodoc. "Teaming up, probably the most pragmatic. Perhaps, we should take a grey-legal mission?"

Lucy, was currently nursing a massive headache. Focusing on rebuilding a droids brain in the middle of warp jumps had ruined her concentration. She leaned over to Chroma. "Hey, I've er...Got a pretty bad headache? Anything doing about that? And yeah, teaming up! Unless I find a frankly wonderful place to settle down, I've got no money and no other options."

"Roar!" The spacebear roared from where he was seated in the airjeep, counting his money. Truly his was a most articulate and meaningful contribution to the discussion.

"I'm sure we'll see all kinds of crazy animals out there, Wilnarr, and I'd be a glad man to help you film them! So then it's settled! Let's go interview some potential crew and see who's willing to work for free, at least temporarily. Zigrund, if you plan on staying, then you might want to snag a translator while you're there because I don't think any of us speak your language."

Jones really wished he understood Zigrund. He seemed so wise and liked shotguns...

He'd fly them over to the spaceport, dock, and hopefully they could see about finding some new crew friends!

The upper levels of the starport had the most space and the best docks, so there were, despite the traffic plenty of spaces for them to dock. But to dock in a bay for servicing and repairs required payment up front which they couldnt afford, so they had the choice of docking the ship on an exterior arm and walking their way into the station, paying their docking fees before leaving or docking in the lower service bays which had older equipment but which also ran the deal of paying docking fees before they leave rather than up front.

Which would they choose?

Wilnarr's brow furrowed. "Didn't our... I suppose not. We don't really have one of those, do we?" He took a step towards the pilot's console. "Let me at the comms. I'll tell them who I am, and they're bound to make us a special allowance!"

"Haha, doubt it Wilnarr, but give it a shot," Jones said, letting Wilnarr have a go at the comms.

Lucy shook her head, continuing to be the exasperated observer. "I could get us some money if someone can steal me some cards and a computer, but I'm not much good for cash right now."

Wilnarr approached the comms, connecting to the upper docks flight control. "Come in, station! This is Olion Wilnarr. I've got a busted-up ship on its way out of a warzone, and I'm on my way to a very important appointment! Come in?"

The station responded

"Who? We're tracking your ship's transponder if thats what you mean, the uh... Bandwagon is it? Sorry, don't matter who you are or where you're from, rules are rules."

"Rules are rules? What rules are you talking about, I didn't even ask anything yet!" said Wilnarr, incredulously. "Come on, I'm Olion Wilnarr, of Beasts of the Rim! You must have watched it back in the day. I'm pretty sure they still do reruns on BCG, even! And I just got shot at by killer robots! We'll tell your boss all about it once I'm on board. They probably want to know, you know, since there's killer robots around! Plus I'm open to give out autographs. I'm planning a comeback, you see."

They didnt respond for a few seconds.

"Huh, so that's who Wilnarr is. Right, be that as it may, you're allowed to dock. Just know if you cant pay on your way out from the primary bays, we repossess your ship."

The station gave them authorisation to land in the upper level docking bays without paying up front.

"Thanks!" said Wilnarr, turning back to the crew. "Alright, we're good! Wonder if there's any wildlife on that station... You wouldn't think it, but there are some strange ecosystems that can grow in forgotten decks."