Chapter 4: Chapter 3: I Feel Like I Forgot Something

After a day in a cramped space that only grew hotter and hotter as the sun beat down on the open cockpit of the SCV, Jack was more than ready to be done. He lost track of how much he had harvested, and it seems like the indicator of his HUD didn't update until he took the material back to base and put it away properly. It had, however, ticked down to 341. Trudging his SCV back toward the command center, he figured it had probably been about eight hours? A single mineral an hour was hardly a serious upkeep cost, but then again... he was using a mere fraction of what the facility was probably capable of. One person piloting a single SCV couldn't drain as much as the whole place being up and running, after all. 

"Honey, I'm home." Jack called out sarcastically as he thumped his way up the ramp and back into the SCV bay, "Adjutant, where do I dump these minerals to be processed?" An arrow flashed into position across the room, where a chute was stuffed with multiple grinders covered in spikes of assorted degrees of length and thickness, presumably to break the crystal into a powder or at least a crystalline gravel. "Sheesh. Why do we not keep this thing covered? Guess the Terrans don't have any sort of OSHA they can complain to when they're stuck out in the space boonies, huh?" He turned around, following the guidance prompts, and backed the SCV into position, before a panel on the back opened and dumped the glittering golden crystals to their demise. 

The mineral indicator on his HUD ticked upward incrementally, until it was showing a whopping 1,031 minerals. 690 minerals? Not bad for a hard day's work. Probably. How much was even average? And this was for the more valuable variant besides... eh. Jack wasn't going to keep dwelling on it. With the rate of drain, he could work one day a week and still probably manage to make a surplus. His controls were a little sluggish as he moved back to the charging dock he had originally taken the SCV from, now that his power percentage was down in the teens. That, combined with not wanting to be outside secure walls in the dark, were both factors in him calling it a day. 

Yanking himself out of the control console the moment the barrier was lifted, he took a long breath of fresh air. Why was the air inside the command center fresh when he had been outside all day? Because the SCV recycled the air and filtered it so much that after hours of sweating himself silly in there, it wasn't exactly pleasant in the cockpit. "Ugh. This is awful. Adjutant, I'm exhausted, hungry, and I need to shower. Where are the bunks?" The mechanical tone he had almost started to miss over his work shift chirped up at him, "Confirmed. Please return to the dormitory area." with a haste that almost seemed to be goading him on. Or was he just reading too much into the AI's ability to speak with nuance, overthinking the pauses and the hasty replies? It was all he had to go on, as the vague professionally-friendly tone never changed no matter what was being said. 

At least the shower was spacious, albeit only because it was likely meant to be shared by a dozen people at once. After he felt slightly more relaxed again from cleaning up, he made his way back down the passageway toward the Mess Hall. Nothing changed since the last time he was in here, shockingly enough. Spotting what looked like a vending machine in a back corner by a jukebox, he grabbed a bottle of water and a bag of 'survival wafers' that both looked and tasted like overly thick-cut, exceptionally stale chips. Maybe he could have figured out how the kitchen worked for a hot meal, but he wasn't about to do more work at the moment. 

He tapped a few buttons on the Jukebox at random, and an upbeat guitar solo started to reverberate around the empty room, contemplating the tabletop in front of him with a heavy sigh before looking around. He had been able to distract himself with the excitement of piloting earlier, and losing himself to the work, but now he was really starting to feel the loneliness amplified by the would-be cheerful surroundings. He could almost imagine a bunch of roughnecks after a day of labor fighting over what song would play, or playing cards, or... anything. He didn't know why it bothered him so much, he had always been a loner. But something was telling him he needed to fill this place up. That he couldn't just leave it empty. Like he needed the people who would be here. 

"How long before anyone else could even be here with me, anyway?" he mused aloud, before the Adjutant crushed his mood yet further, "Approximately a month of non-light-speed travel. Which is standard for any non-capital-class ship, such as Battlecruisers." Frowning, he tossed his trash onto the table and started to walk away, "I didn't really want to know, but thanks for that, Adjutant. Any other pressing information you feel like shooting my way?" "Acting manager Pilot 21283 does not have sufficient free time to peruse the entirety of the station's database." "Smartass." "Affirmative."

After finding his way to a cramped room with a single bunk, he crawled into the bed and yanked the blankets over his head as if to block out the world. He managed to get himself to sleep, but he had a lingering sense of unease in his gut. More than he expected at the situation, that is. It was a nagging feeling he would get in the past when he procrastinated a school project or put off his work to the last minute, but he couldn't come up with a good reason as to why before he passed out. 

When he awoke later, it was to an unfortunately familiar klaxon alarm blaring in his ears, though the lighting still seems to be functional this time. "Alert. Unauthorized presence. Alert. Unauthorized presence. Alert-" Jack jerked himself up and covered his ears, "Alright, something serious is going on, I'm awake! Adjutant, kill the alarm and tell me what's going on!" He shouted as he shoved himself toward the door. "The alarm was utilized when acting manager Pilot 21283 did not respond to his communication ping. It would appear as if unauthorized life forms have boarded the Command Center, and are currently occupying the interior of the SCV bay."

Jack's eyes widened as he realized that he never had the Adjutant close the door behind him after he dumped off the minerals and hooked the SCV back up. "Why was the bay door open? I know I didn't explicitly tell you to close it, but that should be implied! Or at least remind me of it!" The immediate response chirped in his ear seemed to anticipate his anger, "If the acting manager requires a reminder, please schedule one in advance in the future." "I swear when I resolve this, you and me are going to sit down and set up a whole lot of 'reminders' then! Where are the hold-out weapons you mentioned when we talked earlier? Please tell me they aren't-" Interrupting him with what he could only interpret as gleeful malice, the Adjutant replied, "They are located in the SCV bay, near the exterior bay door." Of course they are. 

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"What are we- what am I dealing with in there? Since you know there's intruders, can you get me a visual?" A small image, similar to a television picture-in-picture appeared on the left side of his vision, and even with the small resolution of the display, he could recognize small, quadrupedal creatures. A meter in height, with two savage-looking scythe-like appendages sprouting from the shoulders above the forelegs. The reddish skin of the creatures was plated in many areas with a thick, armored chitin. "Adjutant, that is a goddamn Zergling! You told me you hadn't sensed any Zerg on this planet!" With a positive ding, the Adjutant replied, "Acting manager Pilot 21283 is correct. At the time, no Zerg presence had been detected. However, without a sensor tower or orbital satellites to command, the command center scanning distance is severely limited. It is also possible that the Zerg were attracted to the unique energy reading output by the processing of high-value golden mineral clusters."

Resisting the urge to devolve into angry swearing, Jack started to try and come up with a plan. The door was open, but the Zerglings were just as likely to call for more assistance as they were to leave. And since he had been found once, even if they weren't smart enough to know exactly what was going on here, the Zerg would know there was something here, and likely investigate further. "Adjutant, how long until that new SCV is ready? It shouldn't be in the SCV bay yet, is it?" "Affirmative. The produced SCV is in the production area, waiting to be relocated." After getting the Adjutant to give him directions, he dashed off in that direction. An SCV wasn't meant for combat, but it sounded a whole lot better than trying to sneak past hostile alien life to get a pistol and then use that to fight them. 

He made it to the shiny new tower of chrome, and sighed regretfully. If he had to put one of these machines through the wringer, he almost wished he could damage the older, slightly beat-up looking one. No time for alternatives, though, as he strapped himself in and started to bring the machine to life. The readout on his display showed he had a whopping 10% power to work with, since the SCV hadn't been hooked up to a charger since it was built, just using the residual power in the battery from its assembly. There was a new path to follow that circled around opposite to where he entered, presumably toward the SCV bay, and he stomped down the cramped tunnel. "This will be easy. I'm like four times their height in this, I'm armored, and I definitely don't remember how Zerglings that got into my base shredded my SCVs like they were made of tissue paper..."

Several deep breaths passed as he stood next to the last door keeping him from the hostile aliens. He could hear them, skittering around and clawing at things, and the heavy thump of his footsteps hadn't exactly been subtle. He turned on the heavy boring drill on his right arm and revved it, taking a firm stance before the door. "Adjutant. Open the door."

With a whirring screech of metal and a hiss, the door slid open smoothly, though it had barely cracked open when one of the quadrupedal aliens tried to squish itself down and wriggle under the rising obstruction. It had all of a moment to register the glinting metal on the underside of an armored foot shoving down before several tons of weight crushed the unfortunate creature's skull. Jack made a face at the splatter of blood on the bulkhead and floor, but had time for little else.

The casualty seemed to have enraged the other creatures and with the door open, a half-dozen more sprang at him all at once. It wasn't an orderly line, it was a mob, leaping at him and grasping at the legs of the SCV with their limbs, scythe appendages scratching and stabbing, trying to penetrate the armor. Almost immediately the green image of his right leg went orange as a scythe blade shoved deep into the joint. It was little solace that it snapped off when he tried to move, making the creature shriek in response. The drill-arm was busy trying to work its way through the one hostile it could aim at, and Jack was looking away from it to avoid the worse details of its fate. That, and he actually had to focus on his gripper arm on his left, wrapped around the middle of another Zergling and bashing it repeatedly against the frame of the door next to him. Unfortunately, that left four more (counting the one missing a scythe) to do as they pleased to his armored figure. Both legs were taking more than superficial damage and rapidly eased into orange, then red. Sparks jolted from behind him over his head as one circled around him and actually leapt onto the SCV's back, clinging there and stabbing repeatedly with its scythes. 

Throwing the one that had gone limp in his grabber hand across the room, he turned his drill-arm downward to gore one of the creatures damaging his legs in an attempt to topple him, and succeeded at the price of losing his center of gravity. He fell backward, a vaguely disgusting popping sound signaling the end of the hostile that had been on his back. With two more creatures leaping atop his prone figure, he could see each and every one of their jagged, sometimes-broken teeth snapping through the thick, clear glass of his cockpit. Deep furrows in the surface forming as they raked and scratched, his legs not responding to the attempt to move them any longer. "Adjutant? Adjutant help! Do something! Anything!" He was shouting himself hoarse as he tried to smash the aliens off his chest, but was doing as much damage to the cockpit seal that was protecting him as the aliens. Eventually he managed to smash the drill directly into the cockpit while it wasn't spinning, trapping one Zergling against the glass as it shrieked and bled down the front of his SCV.

His SCV had all but stopped responding at this point, and there was still one relatively uninjured Zergling to deal with. Let alone if any of the others were playing dead, or simply mortally wounded but capable of a last attempt at striking him. "Come on, come on...!" The whine of 4% of battery trying to coax barely-functional parts to do their job was grating to his ears, but he managed to lift himself up into a 'sitting' posture and grab the last Zergling with his left arm, the grippers barely clenching tight enough to restrain it. It certainly wouldn't be enough to kill it, and the drill stopped being able to spin a while ago, the internals all but clogged with alien pieces. 

Scrape. Scrape. He army-crawled toward the mineral deposit by using his drill-arm for leverage. Foot by foot, watching his power drain to 3%, then 2%, praying he managed to get this done before the gripping appendage lost the strength to restrain the last Zergling. "Adjutant, activate the mineral grinder!" he shouted, before forcing the side of the last creature to the jagged rollers, watching them roar to life almost as fiercely as the alien shrieked. He dropped back onto the blood-slicked floor, staring at the ceiling through the cracked display, feeling slick, warm blood dripping down through the broken visor onto him, feeling like he was about to pass out. "Adjutant. Close the god damn bay doors." 

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