The Aurora was the crowning jewel of Alterra Prospecting and Mining Inc., as the Chief Technical Officer had told Kenna a week ago over a shared pot of coffee. And it wasn't just because of her size. In fact their rival, some Mongolian firm, had a few ships roughly the same size. But what the Aurora could do that others could not was process a high volumes of materials quickly and accurately in situ. As a consequence, they had advanced Assemblers that allowed them to build any needed equipment from raw materials. Well, any equipment they had the IP rights to, as she found out. That was a problem as the vast majority of the blueprints the machine could make was useless to her. She didn't have much use for unmanned mining drones, and she wasn't up to playing chicken with a death ray in a dinky little shuttle either, so that left the submersibles as the only viable option.
Deciding on the one that seemed most suitable, she selected it on the console and stepped back to let the assembly drones whiz about directing molten plasteel and glass. The Cyclops would be large enough for her and any survivors she picked up, and a radio Vita had assured her would relay any offworld messages the Aurora received in addition to the other lifepods. The sub would also have a fabricator, but it'd go through power like a krogan in a chinese buffet.
Speaking of food…
Shepard clamberedout of the maintenance shaft at Deck 14 and took a few minutes break from the climb to look around. The directional signs confirmed to her that this was the deck with the cafeteria. Break rooms with small vendingmachines were littered around the ship, but she really couldn't survive on candy bars. Her metabolism just wouldn't allow it and she really wanted proper food. The more carbs the better, considering how she was pushing herself physically and biotically the other day.
She advanced carefully through the corridor. There really was no telling which floors were stable after the crash, and of course there were several small fires on board that probably wouldn't go out for another few days. Shepard would put them out if they posed a threat or got in the way, but she couldn't play fireman for the whole kilometer long ship. She got lucky though, this deck seemed in good shape.
The doors to the cafeteria slid open at her touch to reveal an unwelcome sight. Alien crab-things were crawling all over the place, scuttling under the tables and crawling over the serving counter into the kitchen. One of them paused to look at her with its big, singular, blue eye and chittered. Then another joined it in staring and chattering, and another until there was a loud chorus of clicks. It was when they began to rush at her that she broke from her stunned silence and slammed the door shut.
"Vita, what the hell were those things?" Kenna demanded.
"Scans indicate them to be four legged arthropods. They appear to be omnivorous scavengers. Would you like to name them, Ensign?"
"Would I want to- what?" she asked, bewildered.
"Terran common law grants the right of Prima Nomina to all explorers and discoverers. Would you still like to name the arthropods, ma'am?"
"...Sure, why not?" she responded, taking a moment to process all of that. "ugh...Wreck Crawlers?" she suggested.
"Name confirmed. Species: "Wreck Crawlers" has been catalogued."
"Any other surprise wildlife encounters I should be made aware of?"
"Negative, Ensign."
She humphed crossed her arms in frustration. "This is just great. What am I supposed to do for food now?"
"Harvesting alien flora and fauna is a proven survival strategy. When Craig McGill crash landed on 999 Boreas d, he survived for 7 months on a healthy diet of live tree-roaches and raw stankroot."
"That's...not a bad idea, actually." Kenna thought, cocking her head at the ceiling. Given that the 'crawlers could eat the Aurora's supplies, that meant they were levo-protein based. Not that she was going back in there to have crawler legs for dinner, but if an omnivore was levo then that meant the rest of the planet probably was too. "Best get fishing, I suppose."
