AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He let out a deep sigh and scrubbed his hand down his face. He was in trouble. Big. Big. Trouble.
Nisha stepped from the bathroom wearing fresh clothes, her dirty clothes bundled in her arms. “I’m ready for the tour.”
He went to the door, and it automatically opened. “You can leave your clothes on the bed. Shall we get started?”
She stopped by the bed to drop her clothes. “Am I allowed to take pictures or videos?”
He hoped to give her a look that portrayed how crazy that question was. Solgre would murder him if he allowed pictures and video evidence of their existence.
Nisha grinned sheepishly then dropped her phone on the bed. “You can’t blame me for asking. For the record, the only two people I would’ve showed the footage to are my mom and Tasha.”
He motioned for her, and she joined him at the door. “Halo Onehas three floors; top deck, main and lower deck. We’re on the main deck. Here, we have the living spaces such as our personal quarters, guest quarters, kitchen, dining and exercise room.”
She glanced into the hallway and indicated her head toward the closed doors. “Is that where Phate and Solgre live?”
“No, we each have our own living spaces. The ship is built for long-term space exploration.” He stepped from his room, and she followed. Once they were in the hallway the door automatically closed behind them. “Because of that, it was outfitted for us to potentially have mates, families.”
“So, they’re empty rooms?”
He nodded and started down the hall toward the connection point of the four main hallways. He pointed left then right. “Phate’s and Solgre’s living quarters.” Then he kept forward. “We don’t spend a lot of time in our personal living spaces, usually only to sleep. Most of our time is spent in our labs, working on various projects, the bridge, exercise room or the kitchen.”
He continued on as she followed. “If you roam the ship by yourself, you only have to voice loudly where you wish to go. The ship’s onboard computer system will guide you.”
“Is it safe for me to wander by myself?”
“The computer won’t allow any of us to enter into any dangerous spaces without an override. You’ll be safe.”
His second official stop was the bridge. He needed to check the progress of the repairs and system updates. Kien went to his station and flicked on the controls. From the corner of his eyes, he tracked Nisha’s every movement. She walked the perimeter of the room, eyes on the various monitors on the wall. There wasn’t anything she could touch that would disrupt the ship’s functions, so he let her explore.
He pulled his gaze from her and focused on the holograph in front of him. The solar flare had done so much damage. There was still radiation in certain parts of the ship that made those rooms uninhabitable.
Kien scanned the ship’s specs. There were areas dotted in green, red and yellow. Green meant the area was working and clear. Those were few, with the labs being the first to come back online. Yellow meant the area was in process of coming back online and red meant the area had not yet come back online.
Life systems were in the yellow, most likely the mechanical bots had been dispatched to fix those areas when he’d entered the hatch. The engine room was completely red, including the jump drive. He checked the status. The mechanical bots actively worked there, but it would take time to fix. The outer hull was green, good.
At sensing no lifeforms were onboard, the working bots would’ve concentrated first on getting the other bots back online by either fixing them or removing the damaged bots for spare parts. Once that task was completed, they would, as a unit, fix to contain the hull, stopping any further damage to the confines of the ship. After that, the bots would’ve divided and conquered the less vital areas of the ship.
Communications weren’t back online, but Kien figured another day or two and that too would be repaired. Life-support was at twenty-five percent. The outer hull was at eighty-five percent, which was better than he would’ve imagined.
When they returned in a few weeks,Halo Oneshould be in much better shape than they’d left it.
After leaving the bridge, he took her to the safe areas, including the main engineering room where she was afraid to touch anything for fear of “blowing up the ship” and to the shuttle bay where she couldn’t keep her hands off their personal on-planet vehicles.
They ended up in his lab with Nisha sitting on a counter watching him re-configure the portable replicator. She snacked on the closest food item to potato chips they had.
She raised one in the air, inspecting it. “I can’t believe I’m eating food from a different planet.” She popped it into her mouth. “And it tastes pretty good!”
She closed her eyes and hummed and shimmied her shoulders as she ate it.
Kien glanced up from his seat at his work bench to watch her.
I could get used to this.
Phate and Solgre never hung out in his lab, unless they were there to provide a second analysis for him. He’d thought he liked the solitary nature of his work. If he got lonely, he would turn on music or listen to commentaries about new discoveries that were happening in the galaxy. He’d never once thought during his times of loneliness, to get a mate to help fill that void. Now, here he was looking at someone and wanting her for that role.
“That technically isn’t from another planet. The design is, but not that in itself.”
“Right. It’s replicated.” She popped another into her mouth. “It sure tastes real though.”
