Chapter 2: Finally in between the stars
His hunger started to be annoying, he never felt such pain of not being able to eat. He was holding on to his last few sips of water as long as he could, but he was not trained for this. He managed to stress himself to work several hours on the computer, but he could not even read it all, not to mention understand it. So the boy decided to take a break and walk around the base, maybe he overlooked something, but sadly before he was as desperate as now and didn't miss anything. Only the computer he didn't check was in the room with the goggles.
"Well If I won't touch anything, it might be fine. The goggles were also kind of useful if they really are the reason I can understand the language."
He opened the door and looked inside the room that was supposed to be a storage. He found a list of items, but most of them were missing, the aliens probably took them before they left. Now with this list, he found out that the goggles were a failed prototype for interspecies communication, the flaw was that they only worked on some individuals and only gave them some random level of understanding, or damage theirs brains. Thankful they did the later and the boy could use them. Well not anymore, they were not responding and looked kind of broken.
He found several other devices not that impressive but still useful, like a torch with strong blue light, but smaller than his finger, or something looking like a screwdriver, but there were no screws around the ship haul. The log stated it was a multi-functional tool. There was also the small gem-like devices that lit when he touched it, it was a personal medical scanner, it took it a while before it showed the boys vitals. They left it here since it randomly shut down.
Finding something new was a nice change of pace, but otherwise useless, making the boy more and more worried over his life and his ability to turn this device on again. He did it before just by walking to a room, why it took too much time now was something he rather didn't think about.
"Damn it!" first breakthrough and the last. He finally found out the operation commands for the console on the ground, but it also displayed its status. It was lacking energy. He backed off and pull his hair out, making his head throb in pain.
That was it.
He was out of ideas.
"Maybe I can find out something about the energy in the big control room," he ran there and tried to find something about energy, he opened the screen with energy display.
He looked at it in more detail. It told him that this base had three battery cells. One backup, one powering the device, and one the facility. Two were dead, one had sixty-seven percent, and was hooked up directly to the device. There was nothing he could do. He looks at the ceiling and few tears start to roll on his cheek. He quickly cleaned them and looked at everything again.
"Maybe I can open other rooms..." It looked like one of the rooms was heavily damaged and it was without artificial gravity and air, the others were shut in only to conserve power, so he just needed the battery hooked up to the main system. Thankfully after yet again several hours he managed to use the battery to supply twice as the power to the base, by using a prepared program for an emergency.
He looked at the plan of the facility and just waited for the rooms to look accessible. There was one massive room, which sparked a bit of hope in his heart. Hangar. Not that he was confident in flying a ship, but it was his last choice.
"What the hell?" for some reason a noise came out of the computer, it was similar to an alarm, but not that loud or annoying. It was fairly easy for him to check what was going on. It looked like the power from the cell-powered up the rest of the facility but also turned on some sensors. It was just a late reminder, that there were rooms without life support. Other systems turned on and he was able to raise the silver-plated windows and see the stars again.
"There is a ship, there is a ship, there is a ship!" he was repeating his last hope. The hangar was without gravity, but that didn't really mean anything to him just yet. So, he went there. It was a lot bigger then he could tell by the plans. He saw several crates and barrels floating in the room as he was. It was weird feeling suddenly lose weight and since he was already sick from the stomach from all the stress it was not surprising he tried to vomit, but his stomach was already empty. He drifted to the other side of the room and tried to calm and control his direction. After a while, he got his bearings and saw a ship. At least it looked like one with yellowish color, window in the front, and geometrical design. It looked like a fat pipe and didn't impress him in size either, it was a little bit bigger than a normal van.
By touching the back of it, a door opened and made him back off in fear as a skeleton went right for him. If he still got anything in his belly, now it would be gone for sure. He turned his head and let it drift to the room, while he entered the ship.
The boy sits in the chair that had two control sticks and the ship lit.
"Wohoo!" escaped hi mouth s as he understood how to operate the ship. Like it borrowed into his mind, reading most of his thoughts. His first was to fly, but that didn't happen. He focused on more confidence and only made a screen appear on the window. It showed a warning.
"Oh shit, he died thanks to the plague?" he read the warning, but the screen changed probably following his thought process and showed that all sensors are fine, and no plague was detected.
Playing with the ship was much more fun than the computer. He managed to turn it on, close the back door and got gravity in it. He also found a navigation system with dozens of habitable planets. He was set to go, but first, he went back. With a plan to leave this base he knew, he might never go back here! But what if this place is the only place with technology to get him home? He could not risk it to leave everything here just like that. His supplies were none existent, but this idea only took him a second. He filled his bag with the tools he found in the room with the goggles and took the power cell from the main system. Many errors started to alarm him, but he charged the systems enough before, that he had a lot of time before life support shut down.
With his treasure, he went back to the small ship. The skeleton didn't even show up and he could safely open the hangar door. Sucking everything out and after a few minutes he flew out.
He might have bumped into the side of the door, but that was the best he could do.
Concentrating on flying the ship took some time and he drifted far from the station, relatively speaking, it was still fairly visible. He could finally focus on more them just nicely flying forward. The screen showed up again and he saw coordinates for this base and information about the device.
He also found out more about the ship, it had a cloaking ability, but he couldn't know if it was working or not. It had weapons as well, but he could not access them. Not that interesting was a second door, that cut the pilot room from the rest of the ship. Sadly, no shields, he kind of image them to be there as well, with all the sci-fi elements in place.
"Let's find out the closes habitable planet," he said to himself with a smile, but pale face. Star map appeared on his screen and he shook his head.
"Okay, how long before I get there?"
"Ehh, can't this ship like fly to other planets?"
"This is not right!" he said as the screen told him that the journey would take him more than seventeen thousand years. That was another severe bump in his plan, but somehow, he was not in a panic. He let the ship drift alone and went look around, after all, he was in haste leaving the base just to change the pace and didn't really check the back of the ship. Sadly, he only found a crate with several balls looking toys, with a small tablet screen. He turned on the screen and one of the balls flew upwards, making him back off. It stayed there levitating and he looked at the tablet in his hand. It was a camera, showing him his face.
"Useless..." he threw the screen back to the crate and then took the ball a push it in there as well.
With nothing else, he went back in the pilot part of the ship and looked around the four chairs.
"What is this panel?" it was quite big, with different symbols he didn't recognize. The answer appeared on the screen, telling him it is a control for something called a stargate, which was supposed to be a big circle that could transport you through space. With his thinking, the screen changed and told him that there was this gate on the planet. It sounded very fairytale-like. Big gate to a different world?
"Well let's go," it was something good, after all, there were around ten stargate addresses he could use.
Holding the ship when entering the planet atmosphere was scary, but somehow the ship was so easy to handle he could do it only after two hours flying it. The small vessel entered the white planes of snow and scratched the tip of an icy mountain.
The boy gasped as he saw the big circle device standing in the middle of the great white land. It was frozen solid, so he slowed down and hover above it. He pushed the first button, but nothing happened.
"Damn, I need to melt it somehow!" he had to focus like never before to make the weapons fire. It made his head hurt since a single shot was fired. The yellow big missile, he could guide! But his mind wasn't trained to do so much at the same time, so the ship started to fall uncontrollably down. He was still awake enough to stop the fall, but it made the missile stop and fall instead.
"Fuck this!" he was so weak he couldn't get much worse and with an angry voice, he simple landed on the snow and focused on firing again. The bullet or whatever it was sparked and glow yellow again. It went straight forward and hit the ice in the gate melting it down.
The boy pushed the buttons while looking at the screen and the gate this time responded and started to turn. Big blue, what is it? Stuff. Flew from the gate like a big water bubble, the gate was now filled with water like substance.
"So, I just flew through it?" he couldn't wait any longer and just did that.
Strangely he didn't feel a thing, only shock seeing a dark green jungle and a big yellow sun in the sky. The small ship broke few branches of the trees, as it flew out of the gate and softly landed, crashed, in the jungle nearby.
The boy was unconscious, laying on the control panel with a small stream of blood from his forehead and lip.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone