Chapter 3 : Course Correction

So, there we were, without any trace of Kendra – we believed she was dead – and losing the ship's orbit. I was stuck in the Captain's Nest, with a seemingly dead necromorph inside of an escape pod and Isaac was on the tram en route to the Engineering Deck, trying to restart the engines. I was still looking for the exact problem, and found it a bit after the tram stopped and Isaac stepped out of it...

- Isaac, we've got two problems, and we're working on borrowed time here! First, there's no fuel in the engines. Second, the gravity centrifuge is offline... which means there's a couple of trillion tons of rock pulling us down. - I enumerated - I need you to get that centrifuge operational, refuel the main engine and fire it up so I can stabilize the ship's orbit.

He nodded and I disconnected. It wasn't as if I were going out of the nest to look for Kendra again, I sort of learned my lesson, the only person who could move somewhat freely on the bridge right then was someone with engineering or at least computer knowledge, and I have none. I'm just a Security Chief Officer.

But I was going to learn as much as I could about how this nightmare started. There on the records, it looked like the whole thing started as one shuttle coming from the colony after some artifact was brought aboard the Ishimura and contact was lost crashed into the Flight Deck, seemingly empty, but completely bloodied. My theory was that one of those bats - as I dubbed them at first, now I know them as "Infectors", as it's what they do – must had been on board the shuttle and, after killing the people inside it, fled through the vents of the ship, reemerging only after the other necromorphs increased the quantity of disposable hosts.

(A/N: OK, He just said he wasn't going to explore outside, because he'd not be able to do anything, but then this chapter would be even more boring, with no action outside of the Nest, and just reports to read. Sort of like a worse filler than it already is.)

Though I said earlier I had learned my lesson, I couldn't help but blame myself for the lost of most of my team, first Johnston and Chen, then Kendra, and, God forbid, maybe Isaac sometime later... So, after what my common sense told me, I caught a glimpse outside the Nest, seeing the "dead" necromorph stay still, as I had left it, and used the elevator to get me to the actual bridge. Right then, I received an alert from my RIG, in which I had downloaded the information from the Command Computer, to have live feed from both Isaac's camera and the ship's status. In the report, the readings from the fuel deposit showed some activity inside of it.

- Whatever you did, it's working, Isaac! - I congratulated him - I have a fuel reading. It's only a quarter full, but that's enough to restore orbit once you bring the engines online... - I interrupted, since I caught a glimpse of something really big, but I discarded it as stress. - What the hell? False alarm. Thought I saw something.

I cut the conversation and started walking, aiming anywhere I could see a vent, in case a necromorph would come out of them. If I couldn't access any other areas, I could always ransack the area of any valuable material such as Semiconductors, ammo for my Pulse Rifle or even Power Nodes, which could be used to unlock doors or upgrade equipment. Even if I was doing that, I refused to loot the corpses, not just because it was disgusting, but also because I had morals, and they were the only thing that kept me going right then, not letting me cancel the mission right there and then... Now that I think about it, it wouldn't have made much sense, as even if I had actually canceled the mission, the Kellion, our only way out, was destroyed, trapping us inside of the ship. I found some Pulse Rounds and a Gold Semiconductor, which I sold at the store for 3,000 Credits. I used those Credits to buy more rounds and a small medpack, which were stored inside of my RIG. Ah... technology.

After I came back yet again to the Nest, I kept searching through the ship reports, and the camera tapes to learn what the situation was for the first moments after the planetcrack. Seemingly, people started getting anxious, then depressed, and finally, murderous and suicidal. It happened in the colony, and it also happened on the ship right after the Ishimura did its work. It was too much of a coincidence, but I couldn't find what caused it. I kept looking for it several minutes, when another alert told me the centrifuge was again online. But, as I looked at the ship's status, I saw the orbit was decaying very fast. I commed Isaac again, to tell him how things were doing.

- You're doing great, Isaac! Centrifuge and gyros are both a hundred percent and stabilized. - I informed him - Now get out of there and focus on the engine. I don't know how much time we have left.

I was reading yet another report – this time about some "Marker" they brought onboard with the planetcrack – when I saw Isaac was receiving a comm through his RIG, and I was really surprised when I saw who the sender was... Kendra!

- Isaac? Can you hear me? - she asked - It's Kendra... They attacked me... I ran for it... and Hammond just... he just disappeared.

- Kendra! Where are you? - I questioned her, not believing what I was seeing.

- Nice to see you're alive and well, Hammond. - Kendra snapped sarcastically at me... I don't know if it was because she blamed me for our actual situation or because she didn't like me at all - I barricaded myself in the computer core. I can hear them moving outside. But I don't think they know I'm in here... - she looked very nervous... - I can log into everything from here. I hacked the root and found some reports from the colony. Even before they cracked the planet, the colonists were experiencing widespread dementia. It seems to be related to some artifact they found on the planet. Something called "the Marker". I'll keep looking. I've got your location, and I'm going to unlock the door to Fuel Storage. You can get to the engine chamber from there.

So it was true, then... The Marker was what was causing the dementia on the colony and what caused it onboard the Ishimura, it had to be that... Maybe it was even related to the necromorphs themselves... But I thought something was odd about that Marker... Then I remembered... The Marker was the Unitology's Holy Grial, found and lost about two hundred years ago by someone called Altman, whose mysterious death granted him the title of "martyr" and EarthGov was tagged as the ones who killed him... But if that Marker was seemingly lost... how did it end in Aegis VII? I still don't know.

I tried to contact Kendra and tell her if she could unlock the Security Room for me, so I could unlock the elevators and access the Work Bench to see if I could upgrade something with the few Power Nodes I had (not like I had any experience or anything, but as I told myself, how hard could it be?), but to no avail. Maybe her RIG was damaged and only could make calls and not receive them, maybe she was in an area which couldn't receive calls, due to magnetism... It didn't occur me she could have done it on purpose. So, resigned, I chose to wait for the final alert which would let me ignite the engines and regain orbit. I saw Isaac fight a horde of necromorphs while waiting for the engines to be ready to ignite. Now he was using a flamethrower to keep them at bay. When the last of the necromorphs fell, our engineer pressed another button and the engines ignited, I just had to press the Confirm button from the Command Computer and we could finally regain orbit. A few seconds after igniting, the engines made the Ishimura regain altitude and I commed Isaac to tell him of our success.

- It's working! We're online and functional! - I cried on the comm. - Finally some good news. Get a tram to the bridge, Isaac. - I told him, we'd be safer together - I'm going to get us back into a geostationary orbit.

- Wait, wait! We're not safe yet. - she interrupted - The ship's asteroid defense system is offline. On the way up, the ship's going to pass through a debris field thrown up from the planetcrack... We'll be ripped to pieces unless you restart it.

- Goddammit. - I was frustrated, we had just went out of the frying pan and into the fire... - I'll start working on it from here. Isaac, meet me at the Bridge. You can do more good here than I can. - that was so very true. I cut off the video log

So there we were, Kendra was alive and barricaded inside the computer core, Isaac was on his way to the Bridge to repair the restart the Ishimura's asteroid defense system and I was stuck inside the Captain's Nest, not being able to do anything to help either of them, just reading reports and keeping an eye on the status of both Isaac and the ship...